good lord, i wish blizzard would remove anub'arak's shield. i would rather have his W literally be "press to make a beetle" and just (FINALLY) up his health and regeneration. it is unbearably frustrating to play him. he does borderline zero damage, can't tank for anything, and essentially has 1 ability and 1 ultimate. shield as mentioned does approximately nothing, and burrow charge must be used to escape.
granted damage across literally every single hero needs to go down (or health go up), but anub'arak specifically needs a lot of help.
good lord, i wish blizzard would remove anub'arak's shield. i would rather have his W literally be "press to make a beetle" and just (FINALLY) up his health and regeneration. it is unbearably frustrating to play him. he does borderline zero damage, can't tank for anything, and essentially has 1 ability and 1 ultimate. shield as mentioned does approximately nothing, and burrow charge must be used to escape.
granted damage across literally every single hero needs to go down (or health go up), but anub'arak specifically needs a lot of help.
I.... forgot he was in the game. It's been a while since anyone has picked him in my games apparently
It'll be nice when Xul finally drops and we get some anti-healing on the board.
I'm glad it's a level 20 because I'm afraid it would be too binary.
Like, in order for healers to be useful they'd have to balance around 1/2 healing, but if Xul wasn't there then the healers would be too powerful, etc.
good lord, i wish blizzard would remove anub'arak's shield. i would rather have his W literally be "press to make a beetle" and just (FINALLY) up his health and regeneration. it is unbearably frustrating to play him. he does borderline zero damage, can't tank for anything, and essentially has 1 ability and 1 ultimate. shield as mentioned does approximately nothing, and burrow charge must be used to escape.
granted damage across literally every single hero needs to go down (or health go up), but anub'arak specifically needs a lot of help.
I.... forgot he was in the game. It's been a while since anyone has picked him in my games apparently
i've been playing him a lot recently just because. unfortunately he evaporates almost unbelievably fast. had a game earlier where i got hit with thrall's sundering. proceeded to implode even though the second before i got hit with sundering i had carapace up (thanks for the buff!), and had spell shield. reminded me of dota/lol games, and not in a good way.
It'll be nice when Xul finally drops and we get some anti-healing on the board.
I'm glad it's a level 20 because I'm afraid it would be too binary.
Like, in order for healers to be useful they'd have to balance around 1/2 healing, but if Xul wasn't there then the healers would be too powerful, etc.
I still don't think it's a good idea.
this happened in WoW pvp didn't it? the whole mortal strike thing? i guess if it is solely level 20 then it can be like any other game altering upgrade at that point.
It'll be nice when Xul finally drops and we get some anti-healing on the board.
I'm glad it's a level 20 because I'm afraid it would be too binary.
Like, in order for healers to be useful they'd have to balance around 1/2 healing, but if Xul wasn't there then the healers would be too powerful, etc.
this happened in WoW pvp didn't it? the whole mortal strike thing? i guess if it is solely level 20 then it can be like any other game altering upgrade at that point.
Yes. They were forced to balance PvP around MS, which lead to healing number inflation and basicaly leaving you at the same spot as pre-MS except now you always needed someone with MS because that was the new baseline.
It might be ok cause it comes at 20 but given how Li-Ming was released I'm a little leery on that front right now.
Against my better judgement, I decided to queue up for Hero League again tonight. Cause I guess I'm a glutton for punishment, eh?
Or maybe not.
The draft was honestly incredibly weird. We had Sylvanas/Valla as our first picks (wut), with our Valla not able to speak english (their name was Chinese characters, I think). No one responded when I said my typical "hello all". Which is always a bad sign.
So the draft ended, and the enemy team had the most aggressive dive-y setup comp I've ever seen. Thrall, Johanna, Li-Ming, Zagara, Uther? Jeeeeezus. And we had some strange mish-mash of a team, having zero synergy and people picking Heroes seemingly at random. But we still won, somehow.
It wasn't easy, though. The enemy team had a STRONG start. They were rotating like motherfuckers, even going as far as to put 4 people in top lane at one point. Again, no response when I asked for help. We did get 10 first, but it didn't really matter. They hit 10 shortly after and started wombo-ing. Zagara Maw into Thrall Sunder into Johanna Shield. Utterly annihilated us, fight after fight. Eventually, our Stitches is like "yo guys, quit being so ham. hang back, wait for my hook, then go in." And that started working out. He'd land these amazing hooks, leading into a gank, and enabling us to start fights as 5v4s. We also started playing a bit smarter and stopped stacking for Maws.
So for the rest of the game we followed our Stitches' lead, and he lead us to victory. We went from a hot bumbling mess into an organized ganking machine. Pretty great, I am glad to have been proven wrong. Also, my god, Stitches makes an excellent fucking target for Lightning Shield. Just toss that thing on him, he's huge and fat and all up in everyone's face. So good.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
They still haven't said anything about making adjustments due to the scaling changes. This leads me to believe that they aren't going to do anything about it at all and are just waiting for it to die down.
Like, half the hero pool may as well not exist, and for some reason they think that the new meta is better than the old one. Out of 48 total heroes, only 17 have a win rate above 50%, leaving a whopping 31 below that percentage. Out of those 17 winning heroes, 10 have a win rate above 51%. Out of the 31 losers, 28 have a win rate below 49%. This distribution curve is atrocious and largely holds true across all leagues and all levels of play. Li-Ming and Rehgar are just exacerbating an existing problem.
If this is somehow related to "esports" I'm going to be royally pissed off. Blizzard didn't get where they are by catering to an existing fanbase. They got where they are by doing everything better and creating their own fanbase. This would be like them creating World of Warcraft to cater to hardcore Everquest fans. Who gives a shit what they think.
I'd be really curious to see the player numbers since those changes have been released, too. They've had a handful of high profile new hero releases and a holiday promotion besides. And yet I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the number of players has actually gone down or stagnated entirely because nobody thinks it's fun to spend more time dying or holding your dick in your hands waiting to engage than it is to actually fight and play the game.
On the topic of Mortal Strike vs Healing Balance this is how they should have balanced WoW way back in the day.
They should have made Mortal Strike and all Bleed-effects cleansable by one form of healing or another. Like how you can remove curses, magical effects, diseases, and all of that. De-cursing as it were. Why they never added a De-bleed / De-MS is beyond me. That is literally all they would have had to do to balance it. Put it on a long CD so that the healer has to make a decision on when to use it. But if it will save someone's life to pop a De-MS and then toss a heal, that should have been an option. Then they wouldn't have had to buff heals, leading to the rise of the druid meta and unkillable tanks running around with 15 HoTs on them.
I mean, healers have other sorts of cooldowns - Decursing, Hand of Freedom, and Pain Suppression. It isn't as though there's no precedent for healers being able to remove status effects. The Monk class seems like they would be perfect for this sort of thing - the purging of mortal strike effects. Yes, I know Monks didn't exist in Vanilla WoW during the height of the MS Warrior Meta of PVP. But the solution was still out there for Blizzard to grab it.
Anyway... that's the long way of saying this for Heroes of the Storm -
Mortal Strike abilities are balance-able. Blizzard has a terrible track record (0%) of being able to adequately balance this type of effect, but that's not the same thing as saying balance is impossible. It just means Blizzard failed at it in WoW.
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No-QuarterNothing To FearBut Fear ItselfRegistered Userregular
edited February 2016
Take heart, young one.
If they continue their Wednesday "tweak" patches I think we might be OK.
(I still think Li Ming is too powerful/too much range for a supposedly "Hard" character.)
No-Quarter on
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
A good tank and melee brawler can make Morales infuriatingly good.
When she gets to 20 and you don't have an answer for her, it's pretty much curtains.
They still haven't said anything about making adjustments due to the scaling changes. This leads me to believe that they aren't going to do anything about it at all and are just waiting for it to die down.
Like, half the hero pool may as well not exist, and for some reason they think that the new meta is better than the old one. Out of 48 total heroes, only 17 have a win rate above 50%, leaving a whopping 31 below that percentage. Out of those 17 winning heroes, 10 have a win rate above 51%. Out of the 31 losers, 28 have a win rate below 49%. This distribution curve is atrocious and largely holds true across all leagues and all levels of play. Li-Ming and Rehgar are just exacerbating an existing problem.
If this is somehow related to "esports" I'm going to be royally pissed off. Blizzard didn't get where they are by catering to an existing fanbase. They got where they are by doing everything better and creating their own fanbase. This would be like them creating World of Warcraft to cater to hardcore Everquest fans. Who gives a shit what they think.
I'd be really curious to see the player numbers since those changes have been released, too. They've had a handful of high profile new hero releases and a holiday promotion besides. And yet I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the number of players has actually gone down or stagnated entirely because nobody thinks it's fun to spend more time dying or holding your dick in your hands waiting to engage than it is to actually fight and play the game.
I suspect the pro-scene is at least somewhat involved in that afaik they seem to like the change.
At least in QM and HL it seems to have shit all over hero success diversity though. I don't know about the pro-level though cause I haven't been paying attention much. It was in an ok place before the scaling changes there. Lots of heroes picked even if it was mostly a small core picked all the time with sort of a wildcard addition from the rest of the roster.
I think plenty of normal players aren't fond of it but I don't know if there's enough of them who hate it enough for it to effect the playerbase.
But in general I'm still not sure they see the lower TTK as enough of an issue to fix. They have said they are looking into the "Stun meta" which makes me suspect they might not actually understand that the issue is not CC, it's TTK. But it at least suggests they aren't entirely satisfied with the way the game plays right now.
They also increased tower damage and are apparently looking at nerfing Li-Ming's damage vs structures so maybe they are gonna reverse some of the squishiness they added into everything with the stat change. Who knows.
Oh, so despite my 3 HL losses last night I actually had some really impressive plays during one game.
So, Towers of Doom. Enemy Team Comp is Diablo, Zagara, Anub'arak, Li Li, Jaina.
Our Team Comp is Li-Ming, Rehgar, Raynor, Stitches. I am last pick. I think for a sec, and pick Tyrael, realizing that Sanc is probably going to save a ton of lives.
I was fucking right. Diablo would open with Apoc (or Zagara with Maw), Jaina would follow up with Ring of Frost/combo... The number of times I negated all of that with excellently timed Sancs was incredible.
Too bad my teammates were idiots and we still lost the game. But hey, maybe I'll record some gifs later, cause that shit was dope.
Okay yup yup I did it, I found the best moment in that game.
For some reason, about half the time when I fire up HotS from the launcher, it will instantly disconnect me and I'll have to log in manually. This is the only Blizzard game that seems to do that.
good lord, i wish blizzard would remove anub'arak's shield. i would rather have his W literally be "press to make a beetle" and just (FINALLY) up his health and regeneration. it is unbearably frustrating to play him. he does borderline zero damage, can't tank for anything, and essentially has 1 ability and 1 ultimate. shield as mentioned does approximately nothing, and burrow charge must be used to escape.
granted damage across literally every single hero needs to go down (or health go up), but anub'arak specifically needs a lot of help.
I.... forgot he was in the game. It's been a while since anyone has picked him in my games apparently
i've been playing him a lot recently just because. unfortunately he evaporates almost unbelievably fast. had a game earlier where i got hit with thrall's sundering. proceeded to implode even though the second before i got hit with sundering i had carapace up (thanks for the buff!), and had spell shield. reminded me of dota/lol games, and not in a good way.
It'll be nice when Xul finally drops and we get some anti-healing on the board.
I'm glad it's a level 20 because I'm afraid it would be too binary.
Like, in order for healers to be useful they'd have to balance around 1/2 healing, but if Xul wasn't there then the healers would be too powerful, etc.
I still don't think it's a good idea.
this happened in WoW pvp didn't it? the whole mortal strike thing? i guess if it is solely level 20 then it can be like any other game altering upgrade at that point.
I don't think spell shield helps against windfury at all.
For some reason, about half the time when I fire up HotS from the launcher, it will instantly disconnect me and I'll have to log in manually. This is the only Blizzard game that seems to do that.
That pretty much never happens to me, but it did happen to me last night.
They still haven't said anything about making adjustments due to the scaling changes. This leads me to believe that they aren't going to do anything about it at all and are just waiting for it to die down.
Like, half the hero pool may as well not exist, and for some reason they think that the new meta is better than the old one. Out of 48 total heroes, only 17 have a win rate above 50%, leaving a whopping 31 below that percentage. Out of those 17 winning heroes, 10 have a win rate above 51%. Out of the 31 losers, 28 have a win rate below 49%. This distribution curve is atrocious and largely holds true across all leagues and all levels of play. Li-Ming and Rehgar are just exacerbating an existing problem.
If this is somehow related to "esports" I'm going to be royally pissed off. Blizzard didn't get where they are by catering to an existing fanbase. They got where they are by doing everything better and creating their own fanbase. This would be like them creating World of Warcraft to cater to hardcore Everquest fans. Who gives a shit what they think.
I'd be really curious to see the player numbers since those changes have been released, too. They've had a handful of high profile new hero releases and a holiday promotion besides. And yet I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the number of players has actually gone down or stagnated entirely because nobody thinks it's fun to spend more time dying or holding your dick in your hands waiting to engage than it is to actually fight and play the game.
i mentioned it yesterday to some of the people i was playing with but i wish i knew what the long term plan was. they have indicated on multiple occasions that win rates for certain heroes and other factors were "fine" but to my knowledge nothing about the general direction the game is taking. at this point we have no indication (again that i am aware of) that things are or are not working as intended.
good lord, i wish blizzard would remove anub'arak's shield. i would rather have his W literally be "press to make a beetle" and just (FINALLY) up his health and regeneration. it is unbearably frustrating to play him. he does borderline zero damage, can't tank for anything, and essentially has 1 ability and 1 ultimate. shield as mentioned does approximately nothing, and burrow charge must be used to escape.
granted damage across literally every single hero needs to go down (or health go up), but anub'arak specifically needs a lot of help.
I.... forgot he was in the game. It's been a while since anyone has picked him in my games apparently
i've been playing him a lot recently just because. unfortunately he evaporates almost unbelievably fast. had a game earlier where i got hit with thrall's sundering. proceeded to implode even though the second before i got hit with sundering i had carapace up (thanks for the buff!), and had spell shield. reminded me of dota/lol games, and not in a good way.
It'll be nice when Xul finally drops and we get some anti-healing on the board.
I'm glad it's a level 20 because I'm afraid it would be too binary.
Like, in order for healers to be useful they'd have to balance around 1/2 healing, but if Xul wasn't there then the healers would be too powerful, etc.
I still don't think it's a good idea.
this happened in WoW pvp didn't it? the whole mortal strike thing? i guess if it is solely level 20 then it can be like any other game altering upgrade at that point.
I don't think spell shield helps against windfury at all.
there were actual casters involved, thrall just setup everything with the sundering.
For some reason, about half the time when I fire up HotS from the launcher, it will instantly disconnect me and I'll have to log in manually. This is the only Blizzard game that seems to do that.
That pretty much never happens to me, but it did happen to me last night.
This actually happens to me every single time I launch the game.
Once Hots launches and attempts to log in, it says there was a login error and it failed.
I have to log in manually.
Hell, most times it even asks me for my authentication code even though I launched it from the PC browser just now.
For some reason, about half the time when I fire up HotS from the launcher, it will instantly disconnect me and I'll have to log in manually. This is the only Blizzard game that seems to do that.
That pretty much never happens to me, but it did happen to me last night.
This actually happens to me every single time I launch the game.
Once Hots launches and attempts to log in, it says there was a login error and it failed.
I have to log in manually.
Hell, most times it even asks me for my authentication code even though I launched it from the PC browser just now.
Is your Battle.net client logged in, or does it have the "Go Online" button on the top right?
Played Artanis. Not sure about him. He feels a little like Illidan - if your team's already winning then he's a good additional factor to have. If you're not winning then he gets destroyed fast. I think mostly the problem is that his shield doesn't proc until he's at low health and it's really easy to get burned down super fast. He may be somewhat comp dependent.
@Inquisitor77 The hero winrates need to be analyzed a little deeper to get a full understanding. We used to have Tyrande at almost 100% pick rate and high winrate, and all of the other supports were sub-50% because there's usually 1 support per team, and so statistics says that if one dominates so much the others must be under 50%. We have that situation going on now with Rehgar - 92.5% pick rate, 61% win rate. Heck Tyrande is down to a 47.6% win rate. What hotslogs doesn't allow us to do is analyze win rates minus matches involving a particular hero. Now granted that would be only 7.5% of all matches, but still it's some data and I think all the other supports and stats would change quite a bit. Rehgar is just skewing the statistics right now so it looks like the rest of the supports have sub-50% win rates because they need buffing, when in fact Rehgar just needs some more nerfing.
I noticed you were taking different talents on him than I normally do.
Even on teams with a double tank I tend to be a bit more defensive and talent for his shield to be up ASAP.
I feel he does CONSIDERABLY better on aggressive teams.
This is my build:
1 - Reactive parry, a block++
4 - Templar's zeal, blade dash CD reduc at 50% health. combos well with:
7 - Psionic Energy - shield CD reduc every time you hit a hero
10 - almost always beam. Blind is better vs some enemy comps.
13 - Triple strike is great, but if the team has enough DPS, I like phase bulwark - spell shield that's almost always up? GG!
Bulwark is amazing vs mages.
16 - zealot charge most of the time, especially if they have a lot of ranged heroes.
Otherwise, shield surge is great in getting in the fight and just not dying
20 - Nexus blades almost always. It's soooo good with him.
Even with all of those defensive talents, his DPS is really high because he's just always on face attacking.
The CD on his abilities is (W mainly) is so low that you're just wailing on folk.
I do the same at 1 Reactive parry
4 I do either Templar's zeal or Lethal Alacrity
7 Psionic Energy or Solarite Reaper
10 is Always the beam
13 Triple strike
16 shield surge or zealot charge
and yes 20 like Sonya is Nexus blades
Why the or is because I have been running into a lot of teams with two healers
Or three if they have Kharazim so that extra burst is needed if one of them drops in
Raise Skeleton: When a nearby enemy Minion dies, it becomes a Skeletal Warrior for 15 seconds. Up to 4 Skeletal Warriors can be active at once.
BASIC ABILITIES
[1] Bone Armor: Activate to gain a Shield equal to 25% of your maximum Health for 3 seconds.
[Q] Spectral Scythe: Summon a scythe at target location that travels toward you after a 1-second delay, damaging enemies in its path.
[W] Cursed Strikes: Once activated, your Basic Attacks over the next 4 seconds deal damage in a wide arc and reduce the Attack Speed of enemies hit by 50% for 2 seconds.
[E] Bone Prison: After a 2-second delay, root target enemy in place for 2 seconds.
HEROIC ABILITIES
[R] Poison Nova: After a short delay, release poisonous missiles that deal massive poison damage over 10 seconds to all enemies hit.
[R] Skeletal Mages: Summon 4 Skeletal Mages in a line that attack nearby enemies and slow them by 30% for 2 seconds. Lasts up to 15 seconds.
LEVEL 1
•[Active] Backlash: When Bone Armor expires, nearby enemies take 15% of their maximum Health as damage.
•[Active] Shackler: While Bone Armor is active, nearby enemies are slowed by 30% for 1 second.
•[Active] Shade: While Bone Armor is active, you evade all Basic Attacks, but its cooldown is increased by 10 seconds.
LEVEL 4
•[Q] Death's Reach: Increase Spectral Scythe range by 20%.
•[E] Jailors: Bone Prison summons 2 Skeletal Warriors that fixate on the target for 15 seconds. These Skeletal Warriors do not count toward your maximum Raise Skeleton count.
•[Trait] Trag'Oul's Essence: Raise Skeleton restores Mana.
LEVEL 7
•[W] Harvest Vitality: Cursed Strikes Heal you for each enemy Hero hit.
•[W] Weaken: Increases Cursed Strikes attack speed slow to 75%.
•[Trait] Rathma's Blessing: Gain health whenever a skeleton is summoned.
LEVEL 10
•[R1] Poison Nova: Poison enemies around you.
•[R2] Skeletal Mages: Summon Frost Mages to damage and slow enemies.
LEVEL 13
•[Q] Decrepify: Spectral Scythe slows enemies by 40% for 3 seconds.
•[W] Giant's Curse: Cursed Strikes deal an additional 2% of an enemy hero's maximum Health as damage.
•[Trait] Corpse Explosion: Skeletal Warriors explode on death, dealing damage in a small area. Damage is doubled vs. non-heroic enemies.
LEVEL 16
•Executioner: Basic attacks deal 40% more damage against slowed, rooted, or stunned targets.
•[Q] Flowing Wounds: Reduces Spectral Scythe's cooldown by 4 seconds if it hits an enemy Hero.
•[E] Amplify Damage: Enemies rooted by Bone Prison become Vulnerable for 2 seconds, taking 25% increased damage.
•[Trait] Skeleton Mastery: Increases maximum Skeletal Warrior count to 6 and increases their damage by 100%.
LEVEL 20
•[R1] Call of the Grave: Enemies hit by Poison Nova now also take an additional 1% of their maximum Health as damage every second.
•[R2] Raised Mage: When a nearby enemy Hero dies, a Frost Mage will rise from the corpse to fight for you. Also increases Frost Mage slow amount to 50%.
•[Q] Mortal Wound: Enemies hit by Spectral Scythe receive 75% reduced healing for 4 seconds.
•[Active] Bone Spear: Deal damage to enemies in a line.
SCYTHE
"We knew we wanted Xul to use a scythe which our art team was excited about. Our next goal was to work the scythe into his kit and we went through quite a few ideas but the one that stuck was the idea of a reverse skillshot." - Jade Martin, game designer, Blizzard
SKELETONS
"Whenever a nearby enemy minion dies it will be raised as a skeleton that pushes the nearest lane to Xul. If, for whatever reason, a skeleton is raised outside of a lane it will prioritize attacking nearby enemies before going to the lane. We didn't want Xul running around the battlefield with hundreds of skeletons." - Jade Martin, game designer, Blizzard
SO ABOUT XUL AND LEORIC...
We do have a voice line taunting Leoric when he kills him in the Nexus! I don't want to spoil the surprise but keep your ears open for it! - Jade Martin, game designer, Blizzard
SO ABOUT BLOOD GOLEM...
"One of the heroics we tried and ended up taking out was Blood Golem. Blood Golem was great but it strongly went against our design goal of bringing a Necromancer into the Nexus with little visual clutter." - Jade Martin, game designer, Blizzard
SO ABOUT THOSE BUILDS...
"Xul has great build diversity. He can build himself to be great at sieging a lane, a high-sustain damage attacker, or specialize in cursing the enemy team. If he doesn't go for a skeleton build you will want to focus on making him more about his damage output or increase his ability to debuff the enemy." - Jade Martin, game designer, Blizzard
Hey guys,
I've decided to try HOTS as my first dip into MOBAs, and if anyone is interested in sending me a recruit-a-friend invite I'd really appreciate it (I understand it will nab me a couple heroes).
I'd also love to play some games with anyone willing to endure a beginner.
It's too bad that the skelly's follow the nearest lane and not the player... I think it would have been fun trailing around a mob of exploding skellies.
e: like i don't understand the point of playing any of these "pusher" characters like sylvanas or hammer or zagara when assassins clear waves just as fast and do more damage in teamfights
zagara's lucky enough to have maw so she's got that going for her at least
It isn't just Sylvanas. There are only 3 viable specialists right now in the current burst meta - Zagara, Nazeebo, and Hammer. and that's because those 3 can put up big numbers.
All of the other specialists who don't put up big numbers are pretty irrelevant these days. Poor Azmo, Sylv, Gaz, and whoever else I'm forgetting.
Murky is sort of a fringe case. With Li-Ming dominating the scene, things are rough for everyone's favorite fish. She can 2-shot him if she lands her W->Q combo on him. Murky still finds a role in the game, but only because Octograb is super amazing.
Zag sees a lot of play in HL and pro games because, like you said, maw, but she's also one of the few ranged heroes who can bully some of the stronger ranged assassins (Lunara, Greymane) out of a lane in the early phase.
And she still offers unparalleled vision with her creep. Any of those things alone might not be enough to take her, but all of those combined make her quite the powerhouse.
Posts
granted damage across literally every single hero needs to go down (or health go up), but anub'arak specifically needs a lot of help.
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
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Is Stitches in the game?
Nope.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
I.... forgot he was in the game. It's been a while since anyone has picked him in my games apparently
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I'm glad it's a level 20 because I'm afraid it would be too binary.
Like, in order for healers to be useful they'd have to balance around 1/2 healing, but if Xul wasn't there then the healers would be too powerful, etc.
I still don't think it's a good idea.
i've been playing him a lot recently just because. unfortunately he evaporates almost unbelievably fast. had a game earlier where i got hit with thrall's sundering. proceeded to implode even though the second before i got hit with sundering i had carapace up (thanks for the buff!), and had spell shield. reminded me of dota/lol games, and not in a good way.
this happened in WoW pvp didn't it? the whole mortal strike thing? i guess if it is solely level 20 then it can be like any other game altering upgrade at that point.
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website
i think people are severely overestimating the effect a level 20 talent will have on the game
Agreed. Mortal Strike is a terrible idea.
Yes. They were forced to balance PvP around MS, which lead to healing number inflation and basicaly leaving you at the same spot as pre-MS except now you always needed someone with MS because that was the new baseline.
It might be ok cause it comes at 20 but given how Li-Ming was released I'm a little leery on that front right now.
Or maybe not.
The draft was honestly incredibly weird. We had Sylvanas/Valla as our first picks (wut), with our Valla not able to speak english (their name was Chinese characters, I think). No one responded when I said my typical "hello all". Which is always a bad sign.
So the draft ended, and the enemy team had the most aggressive dive-y setup comp I've ever seen. Thrall, Johanna, Li-Ming, Zagara, Uther? Jeeeeezus. And we had some strange mish-mash of a team, having zero synergy and people picking Heroes seemingly at random. But we still won, somehow.
It wasn't easy, though. The enemy team had a STRONG start. They were rotating like motherfuckers, even going as far as to put 4 people in top lane at one point. Again, no response when I asked for help. We did get 10 first, but it didn't really matter. They hit 10 shortly after and started wombo-ing. Zagara Maw into Thrall Sunder into Johanna Shield. Utterly annihilated us, fight after fight. Eventually, our Stitches is like "yo guys, quit being so ham. hang back, wait for my hook, then go in." And that started working out. He'd land these amazing hooks, leading into a gank, and enabling us to start fights as 5v4s. We also started playing a bit smarter and stopped stacking for Maws.
So for the rest of the game we followed our Stitches' lead, and he lead us to victory. We went from a hot bumbling mess into an organized ganking machine. Pretty great, I am glad to have been proven wrong. Also, my god, Stitches makes an excellent fucking target for Lightning Shield. Just toss that thing on him, he's huge and fat and all up in everyone's face. So good.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
Like, half the hero pool may as well not exist, and for some reason they think that the new meta is better than the old one. Out of 48 total heroes, only 17 have a win rate above 50%, leaving a whopping 31 below that percentage. Out of those 17 winning heroes, 10 have a win rate above 51%. Out of the 31 losers, 28 have a win rate below 49%. This distribution curve is atrocious and largely holds true across all leagues and all levels of play. Li-Ming and Rehgar are just exacerbating an existing problem.
If this is somehow related to "esports" I'm going to be royally pissed off. Blizzard didn't get where they are by catering to an existing fanbase. They got where they are by doing everything better and creating their own fanbase. This would be like them creating World of Warcraft to cater to hardcore Everquest fans. Who gives a shit what they think.
I'd be really curious to see the player numbers since those changes have been released, too. They've had a handful of high profile new hero releases and a holiday promotion besides. And yet I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the number of players has actually gone down or stagnated entirely because nobody thinks it's fun to spend more time dying or holding your dick in your hands waiting to engage than it is to actually fight and play the game.
They should have made Mortal Strike and all Bleed-effects cleansable by one form of healing or another. Like how you can remove curses, magical effects, diseases, and all of that. De-cursing as it were. Why they never added a De-bleed / De-MS is beyond me. That is literally all they would have had to do to balance it. Put it on a long CD so that the healer has to make a decision on when to use it. But if it will save someone's life to pop a De-MS and then toss a heal, that should have been an option. Then they wouldn't have had to buff heals, leading to the rise of the druid meta and unkillable tanks running around with 15 HoTs on them.
I mean, healers have other sorts of cooldowns - Decursing, Hand of Freedom, and Pain Suppression. It isn't as though there's no precedent for healers being able to remove status effects. The Monk class seems like they would be perfect for this sort of thing - the purging of mortal strike effects. Yes, I know Monks didn't exist in Vanilla WoW during the height of the MS Warrior Meta of PVP. But the solution was still out there for Blizzard to grab it.
Anyway... that's the long way of saying this for Heroes of the Storm -
Mortal Strike abilities are balance-able. Blizzard has a terrible track record (0%) of being able to adequately balance this type of effect, but that's not the same thing as saying balance is impossible. It just means Blizzard failed at it in WoW.
If they continue their Wednesday "tweak" patches I think we might be OK.
(I still think Li Ming is too powerful/too much range for a supposedly "Hard" character.)
When she gets to 20 and you don't have an answer for her, it's pretty much curtains.
I suspect the pro-scene is at least somewhat involved in that afaik they seem to like the change.
At least in QM and HL it seems to have shit all over hero success diversity though. I don't know about the pro-level though cause I haven't been paying attention much. It was in an ok place before the scaling changes there. Lots of heroes picked even if it was mostly a small core picked all the time with sort of a wildcard addition from the rest of the roster.
I think plenty of normal players aren't fond of it but I don't know if there's enough of them who hate it enough for it to effect the playerbase.
But in general I'm still not sure they see the lower TTK as enough of an issue to fix. They have said they are looking into the "Stun meta" which makes me suspect they might not actually understand that the issue is not CC, it's TTK. But it at least suggests they aren't entirely satisfied with the way the game plays right now.
They also increased tower damage and are apparently looking at nerfing Li-Ming's damage vs structures so maybe they are gonna reverse some of the squishiness they added into everything with the stat change. Who knows.
Okay yup yup I did it, I found the best moment in that game.
http://gfycat.com/SpanishIdealBoubou
Sanc was used here to negate Apoc on 4 people and Ring of Frost on 3 people.
Sanctification is REALLY good, you guys.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
I don't think spell shield helps against windfury at all.
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wra
That pretty much never happens to me, but it did happen to me last night.
Switch: 6589-6405-3399
i mentioned it yesterday to some of the people i was playing with but i wish i knew what the long term plan was. they have indicated on multiple occasions that win rates for certain heroes and other factors were "fine" but to my knowledge nothing about the general direction the game is taking. at this point we have no indication (again that i am aware of) that things are or are not working as intended.
there were actual casters involved, thrall just setup everything with the sundering.
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This actually happens to me every single time I launch the game.
Once Hots launches and attempts to log in, it says there was a login error and it failed.
I have to log in manually.
Hell, most times it even asks me for my authentication code even though I launched it from the PC browser just now.
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wra
Is your Battle.net client logged in, or does it have the "Go Online" button on the top right?
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
I only ever switch accounts from the launcher.
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wra
I was wondering: Are they waiting until then to wipe out all the current rankings and MRRs?
It makes sense, but man that MMR reset can't come soon enough...
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wra
@Inquisitor77 The hero winrates need to be analyzed a little deeper to get a full understanding. We used to have Tyrande at almost 100% pick rate and high winrate, and all of the other supports were sub-50% because there's usually 1 support per team, and so statistics says that if one dominates so much the others must be under 50%. We have that situation going on now with Rehgar - 92.5% pick rate, 61% win rate. Heck Tyrande is down to a 47.6% win rate. What hotslogs doesn't allow us to do is analyze win rates minus matches involving a particular hero. Now granted that would be only 7.5% of all matches, but still it's some data and I think all the other supports and stats would change quite a bit. Rehgar is just skewing the statistics right now so it looks like the rest of the supports have sub-50% win rates because they need buffing, when in fact Rehgar just needs some more nerfing.
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I noticed you were taking different talents on him than I normally do.
Even on teams with a double tank I tend to be a bit more defensive and talent for his shield to be up ASAP.
I feel he does CONSIDERABLY better on aggressive teams.
This is my build:
1 - Reactive parry, a block++
4 - Templar's zeal, blade dash CD reduc at 50% health. combos well with:
7 - Psionic Energy - shield CD reduc every time you hit a hero
10 - almost always beam. Blind is better vs some enemy comps.
13 - Triple strike is great, but if the team has enough DPS, I like phase bulwark - spell shield that's almost always up? GG!
Bulwark is amazing vs mages.
16 - zealot charge most of the time, especially if they have a lot of ranged heroes.
Otherwise, shield surge is great in getting in the fight and just not dying
20 - Nexus blades almost always. It's soooo good with him.
Even with all of those defensive talents, his DPS is really high because he's just always on face attacking.
The CD on his abilities is (W mainly) is so low that you're just wailing on folk.
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wra
4 I do either Templar's zeal or Lethal Alacrity
7 Psionic Energy or Solarite Reaper
10 is Always the beam
13 Triple strike
16 shield surge or zealot charge
and yes 20 like Sonya is Nexus blades
Why the or is because I have been running into a lot of teams with two healers
Or three if they have Kharazim so that extra burst is needed if one of them drops in
Yeah but the rest of us are playing hots on computers, not stone tablets.
Switch: 6589-6405-3399
Spoilered for text wall
http://www.rgj.com/story/life/2016/02/22/technobubble-q-and-a-blizzard-heroes-of-the-storm-xul-preview/80722130/
TRAIT
Raise Skeleton: When a nearby enemy Minion dies, it becomes a Skeletal Warrior for 15 seconds. Up to 4 Skeletal Warriors can be active at once.
BASIC ABILITIES
[1] Bone Armor: Activate to gain a Shield equal to 25% of your maximum Health for 3 seconds.
[Q] Spectral Scythe: Summon a scythe at target location that travels toward you after a 1-second delay, damaging enemies in its path.
[W] Cursed Strikes: Once activated, your Basic Attacks over the next 4 seconds deal damage in a wide arc and reduce the Attack Speed of enemies hit by 50% for 2 seconds.
[E] Bone Prison: After a 2-second delay, root target enemy in place for 2 seconds.
HEROIC ABILITIES
[R] Poison Nova: After a short delay, release poisonous missiles that deal massive poison damage over 10 seconds to all enemies hit.
[R] Skeletal Mages: Summon 4 Skeletal Mages in a line that attack nearby enemies and slow them by 30% for 2 seconds. Lasts up to 15 seconds.
LEVEL 1
•[Active] Backlash: When Bone Armor expires, nearby enemies take 15% of their maximum Health as damage.
•[Active] Shackler: While Bone Armor is active, nearby enemies are slowed by 30% for 1 second.
•[Active] Shade: While Bone Armor is active, you evade all Basic Attacks, but its cooldown is increased by 10 seconds.
LEVEL 4
•[Q] Death's Reach: Increase Spectral Scythe range by 20%.
•[E] Jailors: Bone Prison summons 2 Skeletal Warriors that fixate on the target for 15 seconds. These Skeletal Warriors do not count toward your maximum Raise Skeleton count.
•[Trait] Trag'Oul's Essence: Raise Skeleton restores Mana.
LEVEL 7
•[W] Harvest Vitality: Cursed Strikes Heal you for each enemy Hero hit.
•[W] Weaken: Increases Cursed Strikes attack speed slow to 75%.
•[Trait] Rathma's Blessing: Gain health whenever a skeleton is summoned.
LEVEL 10
•[R1] Poison Nova: Poison enemies around you.
•[R2] Skeletal Mages: Summon Frost Mages to damage and slow enemies.
LEVEL 13
•[Q] Decrepify: Spectral Scythe slows enemies by 40% for 3 seconds.
•[W] Giant's Curse: Cursed Strikes deal an additional 2% of an enemy hero's maximum Health as damage.
•[Trait] Corpse Explosion: Skeletal Warriors explode on death, dealing damage in a small area. Damage is doubled vs. non-heroic enemies.
LEVEL 16
•Executioner: Basic attacks deal 40% more damage against slowed, rooted, or stunned targets.
•[Q] Flowing Wounds: Reduces Spectral Scythe's cooldown by 4 seconds if it hits an enemy Hero.
•[E] Amplify Damage: Enemies rooted by Bone Prison become Vulnerable for 2 seconds, taking 25% increased damage.
•[Trait] Skeleton Mastery: Increases maximum Skeletal Warrior count to 6 and increases their damage by 100%.
LEVEL 20
•[R1] Call of the Grave: Enemies hit by Poison Nova now also take an additional 1% of their maximum Health as damage every second.
•[R2] Raised Mage: When a nearby enemy Hero dies, a Frost Mage will rise from the corpse to fight for you. Also increases Frost Mage slow amount to 50%.
•[Q] Mortal Wound: Enemies hit by Spectral Scythe receive 75% reduced healing for 4 seconds.
•[Active] Bone Spear: Deal damage to enemies in a line.
SCYTHE
"We knew we wanted Xul to use a scythe which our art team was excited about. Our next goal was to work the scythe into his kit and we went through quite a few ideas but the one that stuck was the idea of a reverse skillshot." - Jade Martin, game designer, Blizzard
SKELETONS
"Whenever a nearby enemy minion dies it will be raised as a skeleton that pushes the nearest lane to Xul. If, for whatever reason, a skeleton is raised outside of a lane it will prioritize attacking nearby enemies before going to the lane. We didn't want Xul running around the battlefield with hundreds of skeletons." - Jade Martin, game designer, Blizzard
SO ABOUT XUL AND LEORIC...
We do have a voice line taunting Leoric when he kills him in the Nexus! I don't want to spoil the surprise but keep your ears open for it! - Jade Martin, game designer, Blizzard
SO ABOUT BLOOD GOLEM...
"One of the heroics we tried and ended up taking out was Blood Golem. Blood Golem was great but it strongly went against our design goal of bringing a Necromancer into the Nexus with little visual clutter." - Jade Martin, game designer, Blizzard
SO ABOUT THOSE BUILDS...
"Xul has great build diversity. He can build himself to be great at sieging a lane, a high-sustain damage attacker, or specialize in cursing the enemy team. If he doesn't go for a skeleton build you will want to focus on making him more about his damage output or increase his ability to debuff the enemy." - Jade Martin, game designer, Blizzard
Gamertag - Khraul
PSN - Razide6
Although I guess it doesn't kick in until the root triggers, so maybe there's time to kill Xul or get back to your team.
What's the cast time on phase shift? I think it would be hilarious to see the prison shoot up halfway across the map.
Or, what happens if you get in the Medivac?
I live for these kinds of silly interactions
Switch: 6589-6405-3399
I've decided to try HOTS as my first dip into MOBAs, and if anyone is interested in sending me a recruit-a-friend invite I'd really appreciate it (I understand it will nab me a couple heroes).
I'd also love to play some games with anyone willing to endure a beginner.
My tag is jmiket#1108
Gamertag - Khraul
PSN - Razide6
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e: like i don't understand the point of playing any of these "pusher" characters like sylvanas or hammer or zagara when assassins clear waves just as fast and do more damage in teamfights
zagara's lucky enough to have maw so she's got that going for her at least
All of the other specialists who don't put up big numbers are pretty irrelevant these days. Poor Azmo, Sylv, Gaz, and whoever else I'm forgetting.
Murky is sort of a fringe case. With Li-Ming dominating the scene, things are rough for everyone's favorite fish. She can 2-shot him if she lands her W->Q combo on him. Murky still finds a role in the game, but only because Octograb is super amazing.
And she still offers unparalleled vision with her creep. Any of those things alone might not be enough to take her, but all of those combined make her quite the powerhouse.
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