Tassadar was in a few missions where he'd use a ranged psyonic attack as his basic attack. He had storm and stuff.
You didn't get to use him TOO much but he was basically the SINGLE Protoss that made any sense and knew Kerrigan was bad news bear and never backed off from his position (aside from Fenix who was a victim of just being a bad-ass-MOFO but ultimately just a warrior/soldier). To the point where he was the only one left alive to try and stop Aiur from being taken over.
He then single-handedly takes a carrier and kamikaze-crashes it in a hive to try and stop zerg's expansion into Aiur (I don't think it worked though).
You're rooting for Tassadar the entire time.
Artanis is like a 15-year old recruit so you never really connect with him in BW.
They need to just reduce all assassin damage across the board by like a flat 10% or something. Every move, every auto attack. Every single thing tied to assassins needs to be universally nerfed.
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Except Kerrigan. Nerf everyone else and she might be brought back into line.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
They need to just reduce all assassin damage across the board by like a flat 10% or something. Every move, every auto attack. Every single thing tied to assassins needs to be universally nerfed.
This. They need to do something about TTK, because right now it's way too short. Buff HP, increasing healing, decrease damage, whatever.
God no. The game needs more characters. It's a terrible idea to stop releasing more. And they can and have been fixing people while churning out new ones. I mean, Rehgar became an overpowered beast at the same time Li-Ming was released and he's been in the game for ever.
Two words- power creep.
Hell assassins alone are becoming better siegers than actual speccs. That's dumb. I called out Nature's Culling talent on Lunara as problematic when she was FIRST RELEASED, waaaaaay before she got buffed.
I was thinking perhaps Blizzard could do something more to enhance the flavor of each Role, say a flat bonus based on their role so like:
Warrior- dmg % redux or a resistance to crowd-control effects
Assn- dmg % buff to Heroes
Speccs- dmg % buff to structures, mercs, minions
Supps- personal health regen % increased
Just a thought.
That's not a problem with new releases though. Look at Rehgar. He got a solid rework without needing to stop new releases. And he ended up overpowered to boot. It's just a problem across the board for the game since the scaling changes, not an issue with releasing new stuff.
For whatever reason they somehow ended up upping damage compared to health. Of everything. Heroes, minions, buildings, everything. And so Time To Kill is still too low for everything.
They need to just reduce all assassin damage across the board by like a flat 10% or something. Every move, every auto attack. Every single thing tied to assassins needs to be universally nerfed.
I too welcome the reign of warriors and specialists again. Top 3 damage winrates are specialists already.
Yawn. Warrior meta is already extremely popular in Asia, nerfing all assassins just makes that happen everywhere.
I think its fine, honestly. Assassins are meant to blow people up. As long they aren't bursting down warriors (and with the exception of like, Anub'arak and Sonya, they aren't), I'm cool with low TTKs on everyone who isn't meant to tank damage.
Tassadar was in a few missions where he'd use a ranged psyonic attack as his basic attack. He had storm and stuff.
You didn't get to use him TOO much but he was basically the SINGLE Protoss that made any sense and knew Kerrigan was bad news bear and never backed off from his position (aside from Fenix who was a victim of just being a bad-ass-MOFO but ultimately just a warrior/soldier). To the point where he was the only one left alive to try and stop Aiur from being taken over.
He then single-handedly takes a carrier and kamikaze-crashes it in a hive to try and stop zerg's expansion into Aiur (I don't think it worked though).
You're rooting for Tassadar the entire time.
Artanis is like a 15-year old recruit so you never really connect with him in BW.
Yeah he was there and he was the sort of hero of the whole affair (in that he's the guy you spend the whole campaign trying to find, then trying to help, then trying to rescue, then trying to help again).
But my point was that he wasn't really notable as a unit in the game and you almost never controlled him anyway. Playwise there's not really much of a fantasy there to build off of specifically related to his character.
I think its fine, honestly. Assassins are meant to blow people up. As long they aren't bursting down warriors (and with the exception of like, Anub'arak and Sonya, they aren't), I'm cool with low TTKs on everyone who isn't meant to tank damage.
Yeah I actually kinda like the way things are right now, after letting things simmer, I mean. Low TTK means it's a lot easier to punish people who are out of position. And subsequently, yourself as well, though it just means you gotta have better positioning and play safer. But I love making plays, I love jumping on dudes who are clearly too far forward, whether in lane or teamfights.
There's a few outliers, as always. Li-Ming absolutely still needs nerfs. Kael's Chainbomb is still bullshit. Things like that.
But I kinda dig the game as it is, now. I mean hell, apparently one of the biggest complains the HotS team was getting was that the game wasn't lethal enough. Welp, now it is.
I think its fine, honestly. Assassins are meant to blow people up. As long they aren't bursting down warriors (and with the exception of like, Anub'arak and Sonya, they aren't), I'm cool with low TTKs on everyone who isn't meant to tank damage.
Yeah I actually kinda like the way things are right now, after letting things simmer, I mean. Low TTK means it's a lot easier to punish people who are out of position. And subsequently, yourself as well, though it just means you gotta have better positioning and play safer. But I love making plays, I love jumping on dudes who are clearly too far forward, whether in lane or teamfights.
There's a few outliers, as always. Li-Ming absolutely still needs nerfs. Kael's Chainbomb is still bullshit. Things like that.
But I kinda dig the game as it is, now. I mean hell, apparently one of the biggest complains the HotS team was getting was that the game wasn't lethal enough. Welp, now it is.
Also all this talk about "they NEED to do this" or "they NEED to do that", like, do they though? Do they really need to completely redesign Tassadar as an Assassin just because you miss when his damage was too high at one point way long ago? His damage is lower now, but he still has good damage for a Support! And lo and behold, he can actually support now. His Shields are great! They used to not be! Archon form could probably use a buff, I'll give him that. But otherwise he's a great Support now.
They need to lower damage across the board by 10% for everyone? I mean, haven't they already been doing that slowly over time with these new Wednesday balance patches? That's what they've been doing, I mean. They're continuing to do so.
They need to give roles passive buffs? I mean, Don't those things kind of already exist? Assassins already shit out tons of damage. Specialists already push lanes and siege extremely well. Warriors have the highest health pools and various talents/abilities that reduce damage already.
I'm honestly not really seeing this or getting this sentiment at all. I think things are fine, honestly? This is the best state the game has ever been in, outside of those few outliers. I don't think the game needs all these drastic changes that people are bringing up. I think they just need to keep doing what they've been doing, especially with the small Wednesday balance patches, and things will continue to be good.
Also all this talk about "they NEED to do this" or "they NEED to do that", like, do they though? Do they really need to completely redesign Tassadar as an Assassin just because you miss when his damage was too high at one point way long ago? His damage is lower now, but he still has good damage for a Support! And lo and behold, he can actually support now. His Shields are great! They used to not be! Archon form could probably use a buff, I'll give him that. But otherwise he's a great Support now.
They need to lower damage across the board by 10% for everyone? I mean, haven't they already been doing that slowly over time with these new Wednesday balance patches? That's what they've been doing, I mean. They're continuing to do so.
They need to give roles passive buffs? I mean, Don't those things kind of already exist? Assassins already shit out tons of damage. Specialists already push lanes and siege extremely well. Warriors have the highest health pools and various talents/abilities that reduce damage already.
I'm honestly not really seeing this or getting this sentiment at all. I think things are fine, honestly? This is the best state the game has ever been in, outside of those few outliers. I don't think the game needs all these drastic changes that people are bringing up. I think they just need to keep doing what they've been doing, especially with the small Wednesday balance patches, and things will continue to be good.
Is it?
I feel like hero diversity is still way down from where it was before the scaling changes.
The problem with trying to discuss "optimal game design goals" is that no one wants the same game. You see this in the Hearthstone thread for example, where people profess a desire for no aggro decks to exist, or no fatigue decks, because that asks them to play a game that they don't want to play as much as their preferred. So it's worth keeping in mind that whenever people express a desire for the game to change or stay they same, it's because it's what they personally have most wanted out of the game.
Also all this talk about "they NEED to do this" or "they NEED to do that", like, do they though? Do they really need to completely redesign Tassadar as an Assassin just because you miss when his damage was too high at one point way long ago? His damage is lower now, but he still has good damage for a Support! And lo and behold, he can actually support now. His Shields are great! They used to not be! Archon form could probably use a buff, I'll give him that. But otherwise he's a great Support now.
They need to lower damage across the board by 10% for everyone? I mean, haven't they already been doing that slowly over time with these new Wednesday balance patches? That's what they've been doing, I mean. They're continuing to do so.
They need to give roles passive buffs? I mean, Don't those things kind of already exist? Assassins already shit out tons of damage. Specialists already push lanes and siege extremely well. Warriors have the highest health pools and various talents/abilities that reduce damage already.
I'm honestly not really seeing this or getting this sentiment at all. I think things are fine, honestly? This is the best state the game has ever been in, outside of those few outliers. I don't think the game needs all these drastic changes that people are bringing up. I think they just need to keep doing what they've been doing, especially with the small Wednesday balance patches, and things will continue to be good.
Is it?
I feel like hero diversity is still way down from where it was before the scaling changes.
I see way more hero diversity now than before.
I still remember the days of only 3 Heroes in any given role ever being viable, with those slots rotating in and out with patches. The Assassin trifecta of Kael, Jaina, and Zeratul, wherein no other Assassin really mattered quite as much. The Warrior trifecta of Johanna, Leoric, and Muradin. So on and so forth.
The scaling changes did a lot to increase diversity. We have lots and lots of different Heroes seeing play now. ETC and Diablo came back with a vengeance. Stitches is good again now. Sonya shot up in popularity as being the premier Bruiser. And then got nerfed, but she's still great.
Raynor, Thrall, and Greymane have all really risen up as good autoattack Assassins. Falstad, Lunara, and Valla are good non-Mage ranged picks.
Supports... Well, I'll admit they're not in the best spot right now. Buuuut aside from Rehgod, we're still seeing Morales, Tassadar, Tyrande, Kharazim, Malfurion all being pretty common picks in competitive. Brightwing has risen in popularity too, as a specific answer to some Heroes. Uther has strangely fallen out of grace a bit, most likely because of Rehgod. But he's still good too.
Also all this talk about "they NEED to do this" or "they NEED to do that", like, do they though? Do they really need to completely redesign Tassadar as an Assassin just because you miss when his damage was too high at one point way long ago? His damage is lower now, but he still has good damage for a Support! And lo and behold, he can actually support now. His Shields are great! They used to not be! Archon form could probably use a buff, I'll give him that. But otherwise he's a great Support now.
They need to lower damage across the board by 10% for everyone? I mean, haven't they already been doing that slowly over time with these new Wednesday balance patches? That's what they've been doing, I mean. They're continuing to do so.
They need to give roles passive buffs? I mean, Don't those things kind of already exist? Assassins already shit out tons of damage. Specialists already push lanes and siege extremely well. Warriors have the highest health pools and various talents/abilities that reduce damage already.
I'm honestly not really seeing this or getting this sentiment at all. I think things are fine, honestly? This is the best state the game has ever been in, outside of those few outliers. I don't think the game needs all these drastic changes that people are bringing up. I think they just need to keep doing what they've been doing, especially with the small Wednesday balance patches, and things will continue to be good.
Is it?
I feel like hero diversity is still way down from where it was before the scaling changes.
I see way more hero diversity now than before.
I still remember the days of only 3 Heroes in any given role ever being viable, with those slots rotating in and out with patches. The Assassin trifecta of Kael, Jaina, and Zeratul, wherein no other Assassin really mattered quite as much. The Warrior trifecta of Johanna, Leoric, and Muradin. So on and so forth.
The scaling changes did a lot to increase diversity. We have lots and lots of different Heroes seeing play now. ETC and Diablo came back with a vengeance. Stitches is good again now. Sonya shot up in popularity as being the premier Bruiser. And then got nerfed, but she's still great.
Raynor, Thrall, and Greymane have all really risen up as good autoattack Assassins. Falstad, Lunara, and Valla are good non-Mage ranged picks.
Supports... Well, I'll admit they're not in the best spot right now. Buuuut aside from Rehgod, we're still seeing Morales, Tassadar, Tyrande, Kharazim, Malfurion all being pretty common picks in competitive. Brightwing has risen in popularity too, as a specific answer to some Heroes. Uther has strangely fallen out of grace a bit, most likely because of Rehgod. But he's still good too.
Diversity's here, man.
because now it doesn't matter what hero you play since you'll just be splattered all over the pavement in 1.5 seconds
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I just want to spend more time fighting and less time avoiding fights or waiting for a rez timer. It was plenty possible to punish people for bad positioning before - now you are just penalized much more quickly and much more heavily for doing so.
Imagine if they had kept the TTK the same while still keeping the scaling changes and increasing rez timers across the board. I think this would have had functionally a very similar effect on the meta but would've kept the game much more active in terms of time actually spent fighting instead of time spent running around the map avoiding each other while trying to get a level lead.
Like, you watch all the pro games and it's the same thing. There are rarely any actual fights anymore. Even when there are fights, often teams will pull out prematurely once it starts going south. The way things are shaping up, you are often better off simply conceding or stalling an objective while trying to catch back up in levels or make some kind of trade happen in exchange for losing the objective.
I get where they're going with it, but I think there are ways to make it so that you spend more time actually fighting. I want to duke it out and blow up some mans. Like, you can barely even poke in a lane anymore. Most of the time you just end up waiting for whatever minion wave shows up based on the hero matchup and team rotations, and clearing it while it's at the wall, because heaven forbid you step out farther than 3 feet or you will get torched. I don't want to just spend all game rotating and clearing waves and timing merc camps.
I'm not coming from this as a huge loser, either. I'm winning a lot more now than I used to - my win rate in the month of February alone is over 65%. Right now, the meta is driving way too much in terms of win rates. I gave the numbers on this several pages ago, but a small minority of heroes are significantly above 51% while the large majority of the rest are below 49%, sometimes drastically in both directions, and the skew only gets worse the higher in skill you go, not better. I could be completely wrong on this, but it felt like there was A LOT more hero variety in terms of being able to mix and match a comp that could actually work even if the hero was ostensibly "not as good" as a counterpart.
@Dibby, let me put it this way - in the past month, in how many of your games have you played Li-Ming or Rehgar? Do you think that maybe your adjustment to the existing meta of hero tiers, conscious or not, may be contributing to your assessment of the state of the game? Because from my own experience, I know for a fact that I just plain won't touch a non-meta hero (see: Illidan) unless I have the firm expectation that I'm just gonna lose that fucking game. Otherwise, I have a much higher-than-likely chance of winning, and it's somehow still boring as fuck because the fights only last 10 seconds at most and I spend the rest of the time like, clearing minion waves. Wooo.
Also all this talk about "they NEED to do this" or "they NEED to do that", like, do they though? Do they really need to completely redesign Tassadar as an Assassin just because you miss when his damage was too high at one point way long ago? His damage is lower now, but he still has good damage for a Support! And lo and behold, he can actually support now. His Shields are great! They used to not be! Archon form could probably use a buff, I'll give him that. But otherwise he's a great Support now.
They need to lower damage across the board by 10% for everyone? I mean, haven't they already been doing that slowly over time with these new Wednesday balance patches? That's what they've been doing, I mean. They're continuing to do so.
They need to give roles passive buffs? I mean, Don't those things kind of already exist? Assassins already shit out tons of damage. Specialists already push lanes and siege extremely well. Warriors have the highest health pools and various talents/abilities that reduce damage already.
I'm honestly not really seeing this or getting this sentiment at all. I think things are fine, honestly? This is the best state the game has ever been in, outside of those few outliers. I don't think the game needs all these drastic changes that people are bringing up. I think they just need to keep doing what they've been doing, especially with the small Wednesday balance patches, and things will continue to be good.
Is it?
I feel like hero diversity is still way down from where it was before the scaling changes.
I see way more hero diversity now than before.
I still remember the days of only 3 Heroes in any given role ever being viable, with those slots rotating in and out with patches. The Assassin trifecta of Kael, Jaina, and Zeratul, wherein no other Assassin really mattered quite as much. The Warrior trifecta of Johanna, Leoric, and Muradin. So on and so forth.
The scaling changes did a lot to increase diversity. We have lots and lots of different Heroes seeing play now. ETC and Diablo came back with a vengeance. Stitches is good again now. Sonya shot up in popularity as being the premier Bruiser. And then got nerfed, but she's still great.
Raynor, Thrall, and Greymane have all really risen up as good autoattack Assassins. Falstad, Lunara, and Valla are good non-Mage ranged picks.
Supports... Well, I'll admit they're not in the best spot right now. Buuuut aside from Rehgod, we're still seeing Morales, Tassadar, Tyrande, Kharazim, Malfurion all being pretty common picks in competitive. Brightwing has risen in popularity too, as a specific answer to some Heroes. Uther has strangely fallen out of grace a bit, most likely because of Rehgod. But he's still good too.
Diversity's here, man.
Is it? Cause I'd say the average QM game is still pretty uniform. Hotslogs shows only 17 out of 48 characters at or above 50%. So only about a third of the characters in the game are positive winrates and it's heavily skewed towards the top end of that.
Looking at the Blizzcon finals on the other hand, you had a very diverse selection of heroes used. Alot of the same people in each games but most heroes were used at least once. If I remember information from recent tournaments suggested diversity was down from then, though obviously changed. We'll see more after this weekend.
The scaling changes also seem to have curtailed alot of alternate types of playstyle like sieging and tankiness and more gradual damage because there's so much damage anyone can blow shit to pieces and stuff dies so fast gradual damage doesn't have a chance.
I must be in the minority then, when I say that one of the biggest draws for this game is the fact that battles were slower and combat was a much more deliberate and paced encounter. I liked the fact that this game was slower than it's competitors in the genre.
And slower doesn't mean easier. Slower means more thought, strategy, and mid-fight positioning can occur in team battles. Slower means battles aren't over in the duration of a sneeze. Battles aren't decided by whoever can chain their Q->W->E->R the fastest. Slower combat meant that healers were actually valuable as mid-battle contributors to the fight. Now, with the way things are in this super burst meta, healers get to cast 1 heal spell at sometime during the course of the 3 second battle, and then maybe another heal at the end on whoever is still left standing.
I must be in the minority then, when I say that one of the biggest draws for this game is the fact that battles were slower and combat was a much more deliberate and paced encounter. I liked the fact that this game was slower than it's competitors in the genre.
And slower doesn't mean easier. Slower means more thought, strategy, and mid-fight positioning can occur in team battles. Slower means battles aren't over in the duration of a sneeze. Battles aren't decided by whoever can chain their Q->W->E->R the fastest. Slower combat meant that healers were actually valuable as mid-battle contributors to the fight. Now, with the way things are in this super burst meta, healers get to cast 1 heal spell at sometime during the course of the 3 second battle, and then maybe another heal at the end on whoever is still left standing.
i have this opinion as well. i wonder if anyone has (or if there even really is an efficient way) tracked average number of cooldown cycles used per fight, or even just average team fight length.
I must be in the minority then, when I say that one of the biggest draws for this game is the fact that battles were slower and combat was a much more deliberate and paced encounter. I liked the fact that this game was slower than it's competitors in the genre.
And slower doesn't mean easier. Slower means more thought, strategy, and mid-fight positioning can occur in team battles. Slower means battles aren't over in the duration of a sneeze. Battles aren't decided by whoever can chain their Q->W->E->R the fastest. Slower combat meant that healers were actually valuable as mid-battle contributors to the fight. Now, with the way things are in this super burst meta, healers get to cast 1 heal spell at sometime during the course of the 3 second battle, and then maybe another heal at the end on whoever is still left standing.
I sometimes wonder if I've been more anxious about when and how to use Force Wall since the scaling changes, and I think you've brought me to a revelation. I have trouble deciding my placement because I know it will be the only one in a team brawl. When combat was more ponderous, there was room for error, or at least more time to consider where players are going to move. With everyone dying so quickly now, I have one shot -- and if it doesn't do what I need, it's likely at least a partial wipe, where it used to be merely a moderate inconvenience.
I must be in the minority then, when I say that one of the biggest draws for this game is the fact that battles were slower and combat was a much more deliberate and paced encounter. I liked the fact that this game was slower than it's competitors in the genre.
And slower doesn't mean easier. Slower means more thought, strategy, and mid-fight positioning can occur in team battles. Slower means battles aren't over in the duration of a sneeze. Battles aren't decided by whoever can chain their Q->W->E->R the fastest. Slower combat meant that healers were actually valuable as mid-battle contributors to the fight. Now, with the way things are in this super burst meta, healers get to cast 1 heal spell at sometime during the course of the 3 second battle, and then maybe another heal at the end on whoever is still left standing.
Eh, I'll straight out say that past a certain point, low TTK substantially lowers the skill level of the game. If heroes can consistently be killed in a duration of a single CC, that means that every other skill but "Don't get CCed" is totally subordinated, and it reduces the depth of the game vastly. And, as you note, the balance effects tend to be disproportionate. I'd go so far as to say that the closer you get to extremes, the more wildly skewed things are, and again, the more depth you lose.
Low TTK also entirely hollows out the design space, as any number of things like balanced life steal, non-extreme damage mitigation, etc. become fairly unattractive.
Also, cause I totally forgot to mention it, look at the popularity rates on hotslogs too. Half the roster is at a less then 15% pick rate. Almost 2/3rds under 20%.
Given 48 heroes and 10 unique ones per game a perfectly balance selection should net you like a 20% pick rate. Obviously that's not gonna happen but it's heavily weighted towards under 15% right now.
Low TTK might increase the need for twitch reflexes, but twitch reflexes are not the only skill that exist. Good judgement, good decision making, good placement, good rotations become more important when the battle lasts longer than 2.5 seconds. When TTK goes up, the need for thought and strategy also goes up.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that firing off all your spells as fast as you can and blowing someone up in a single rotation is the lowest form of skill that exists, because it is a 1-dimensional skill. You are delivering your entire payload and then the battle is over. It's a one-and-done scenario.
In the old meta, when combat often lasted multiple rotations, battles required give and take, push and pull, constant positioning within the battle itself (instead of just at the beginning/end of combat), and a greater degree of awareness of what the rest of your team is doing.
When the entire battle is over in 1 rotation, it really doesn't matter what the rest of the team is doing. All the assassins dump their payloads, the healers triage whoever is alive, and the tanks hope they're still standing. That's really all there is in a single-rotation low-TTK game.
This isn't a perfect analogy, but I think it gets the job done: Think of the old meta as a game of Soccer. The pace of the game is slow, deliberate, and the teams pass the ball a lot and make use of the whole field. The new meta with the single rotation, high-burst, low-TTK battles are like a game of American Football. Everyone lines up, takes their shots, and whoever is left standing at the end won the play.
I must be in the minority then, when I say that one of the biggest draws for this game is the fact that battles were slower and combat was a much more deliberate and paced encounter. I liked the fact that this game was slower than it's competitors in the genre.
And slower doesn't mean easier. Slower means more thought, strategy, and mid-fight positioning can occur in team battles. Slower means battles aren't over in the duration of a sneeze. Battles aren't decided by whoever can chain their Q->W->E->R the fastest. Slower combat meant that healers were actually valuable as mid-battle contributors to the fight. Now, with the way things are in this super burst meta, healers get to cast 1 heal spell at sometime during the course of the 3 second battle, and then maybe another heal at the end on whoever is still left standing.
Eh, I'll straight out say that past a certain point, low TTK substantially lowers the skill level of the game. If heroes can consistently be killed in a duration of a single CC, that means that every other skill but "Don't get CCed" is totally subordinated, and it reduces the depth of the game vastly. And, as you note, the balance effects tend to be disproportionate. I'd go so far as to say that the closer you get to extremes, the more wildly skewed things are, and again, the more depth you lose.
Low TTK also entirely hollows out the design space, as any number of things like balanced life steal, non-extreme damage mitigation, etc. become fairly unattractive.
Agree completely. Longer fights mean more chance to eke out small advantages via good play and opens up the design space to more kinds of abilities and heroes and kinds of play. Also more fun imo.
I actually had a long fight a week or two back. Like a drawn out smack each other in the face match between our teams over a shrine on Infernal Shrines. I think it was because it was fairly early and both teams were 2 tank/1 healer set ups with no big bursty characters. And it was really refreshing. Lots of back and forth juking for positioning as everyone got worn down and slowly lost health and mana. Their Muradin put his trait to great use by moving in and out of the fight several times to keep his team in it by returning with alot of his health back. It lasted till we finally caught one of their assassins at about half health and out of position and took him out and then rolled the rest of the team back.
Afterwards everyone was in chat like "man that was an awesome fight".
I must be in the minority then, when I say that one of the biggest draws for this game is the fact that battles were slower and combat was a much more deliberate and paced encounter. I liked the fact that this game was slower than it's competitors in the genre.
And slower doesn't mean easier. Slower means more thought, strategy, and mid-fight positioning can occur in team battles. Slower means battles aren't over in the duration of a sneeze. Battles aren't decided by whoever can chain their Q->W->E->R the fastest. Slower combat meant that healers were actually valuable as mid-battle contributors to the fight. Now, with the way things are in this super burst meta, healers get to cast 1 heal spell at sometime during the course of the 3 second battle, and then maybe another heal at the end on whoever is still left standing.
This isn't how I see it at all. Nobody is getting blown up by a full combo unless they're out of position, or the guy doing the bursting over-extended to do so, in which case you're likely going to trade. All of the things you like still exist in the current meta -- battles aren't over in the duration of a sneeze if nobody got caught out. I've played essentially nothing but Li-Ming since she was released, and I can toss Arcane Orbs into warriors all day long and not make much of an impact. It isn't until someone steps out of line, or I flank around the side to catch the backline while putting myself in a risky position, that she's able to start blowing people up.
It's definitely something I'd like to hear the blizz devs comment on. They talk about specific heroes but never about their view on TTK and fight duration. People should spam their twitter accounts with such questions! Not me because I don't use twitter.
It's definitely something I'd like to hear the blizz devs comment on. They talk about specific heroes but never about their view on TTK and fight duration. People should spam their twitter accounts with such questions! Not me because I don't use twitter.
i'd love to hear more developer insight. are they happy with how things are (and it just needs tweaks), should it go back to the way it was, move more in this direction, something entirely different?
I just want to spend more time fighting and less time avoiding fights or waiting for a rez timer. It was plenty possible to punish people for bad positioning before - now you are just penalized much more quickly and much more heavily for doing so.
Imagine if they had kept the TTK the same while still keeping the scaling changes and increasing rez timers across the board. I think this would have had functionally a very similar effect on the meta but would've kept the game much more active in terms of time actually spent fighting instead of time spent running around the map avoiding each other while trying to get a level lead.
Like, you watch all the pro games and it's the same thing. There are rarely any actual fights anymore. Even when there are fights, often teams will pull out prematurely once it starts going south. The way things are shaping up, you are often better off simply conceding or stalling an objective while trying to catch back up in levels or make some kind of trade happen in exchange for losing the objective.
I get where they're going with it, but I think there are ways to make it so that you spend more time actually fighting. I want to duke it out and blow up some mans. Like, you can barely even poke in a lane anymore. Most of the time you just end up waiting for whatever minion wave shows up based on the hero matchup and team rotations, and clearing it while it's at the wall, because heaven forbid you step out farther than 3 feet or you will get torched. I don't want to just spend all game rotating and clearing waves and timing merc camps.
I'm not coming from this as a huge loser, either. I'm winning a lot more now than I used to - my win rate in the month of February alone is over 65%. Right now, the meta is driving way too much in terms of win rates. I gave the numbers on this several pages ago, but a small minority of heroes are significantly above 51% while the large majority of the rest are below 49%, sometimes drastically in both directions, and the skew only gets worse the higher in skill you go, not better. I could be completely wrong on this, but it felt like there was A LOT more hero variety in terms of being able to mix and match a comp that could actually work even if the hero was ostensibly "not as good" as a counterpart.
@Dibby, let me put it this way - in the past month, in how many of your games have you played Li-Ming or Rehgar? Do you think that maybe your adjustment to the existing meta of hero tiers, conscious or not, may be contributing to your assessment of the state of the game? Because from my own experience, I know for a fact that I just plain won't touch a non-meta hero (see: Illidan) unless I have the firm expectation that I'm just gonna lose that fucking game. Otherwise, I have a much higher-than-likely chance of winning, and it's somehow still boring as fuck because the fights only last 10 seconds at most and I spend the rest of the time like, clearing minion waves. Wooo.
So in direct response to the last paragraph, I went and found out exactly who I played over the last month. This includes QM and HL:
So I mean, yeah. I've been playing a lot of Li-Ming. So you might be right about that. I dunno! I'm still finding success and having fun with the game, even when I'm not playing Li-Ming.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
My heroes played list looks very, very similar. It's all Thrall, Diablo, Greymane, and (more recently) E.T.C. Anything outside of that group is done purely for quests or change of pace (i.e., I don't expect to win).
You know, thinking about it some more, I probably wouldn't mind if the game was balanced this way across the board, but the lack of hero balance really bothers me. So I'm kind of lumping in several complaints at once.
At the end of the day, though, the most fun I've ever had playing this game has been with my TL bros (and sis, when @credeiki was around and not playing dirty, dirty LoL), so there's something to be said for being in a cooperative, competitive environment over the long term and being able to work on shit together.
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No-QuarterNothing To FearBut Fear ItselfRegistered Userregular
Makes an excellent point about low Time To Kills in the older meta vs new. It's not really something I've thought of before, or at least I wasn't able to bring it to words.
I remember a time (and I have only been playing since July) that a "lost" fight over an objective might only mean that 1 Hero was dead, but the others were forced to Hearth. Now the problem that that entailed (on BoE for a good example) was that death timers were too low and that a team could wipe their opponents while fighting the Immortal only to then get counter wiped by the "fresh" respawn team and end up losing the Immortal race altogether.
Now it seems that I see teams spending most time in "fights" running around in a circle waiting for that perfect engagement moment to dive in or we just die (and spend a long ass time dead) rather than fighting at all.
Longer fights/ TTK might seem to forgiving to those higher on the skill spectrum, but HoTs is designed to appeal to a more conventional and casual player base, which isn't to sat that there can't be strategy there- just that I shouldn't be punished for not having the best split-second decisions or twitch finger skills. If I want that I'll play an FPS.
I honestly rarely find myself taking talents that add to the action bar (1,2,3,4, etc) because oftentimes I'm dead before I can use them. Doubly so if they aren't some form of total damage negation. On the topic of Illidan, I think part of the reasohis tier 7 talents are showing winrate % competition with First Aid is because people are realizing FA isn't nearly as effective at negating the sheer burst he's taking anymore, whereas at 16 Stoneskin is now showing a noticeable advantage over Blood for Blood.
This might also speak to why Illidan is becoming more popular (Rehgod aside)- he's adept at AVOIDING the burst for just long enough to kill off that squishy or Li Ming.
That's just my opinion, I could be wrong, but despite not being the best PLAYER of this game, I'd like to think I good instincts for fights, especially with what I've been seeing lately.
This needs to just be spammed at people on Gardens of Fucking Terror.
It's the map with the simplest effective strategy because no one knows wtf they are doing on it. But no one does that strategy because most people somehow don't know wtf they are doing on it.
Take your seeds fast, so you can pressure the other team while they try and get theirs.
It's that simple.
Jeeeeezus I just had one of the shittiest QM games I've had in a while. Entirely due to the comps, too.
So, my team was Rehgar (myself), Sonya, Abathur, Sylvanas, Lunara.
Vs a 5 stack of Kharazim, Leoric, Thrall, Valla, Li-Ming.
Yeah. Went about as well as you could expect. We had no damage, no kill potential, n o t h i n g. So whatever though, I chalked it up to the matchmaker screwing me.
Sonya kept diving into the entire enemy team. Blamed me for dying 8 times. Said I was doing "half as much" healing as the enemy Kharazim. Yeah, no shit. Cause I can't heal you when you and everyone else goes splat in 1 second flat. Also because Kharazim has inflated heal numbers, no shit his healing is high. Abathur started bitching at the rest of us, saying we were feeding and being awful and losing teamfights and blah blah blah. Okay.
Later I realized the Abathur was grouped with the Sylvanas and Lunara. So you complained about our teamcomp and losing teamfights and YOU WERE THE WHOLE REASON WHY? Fuck you. Fuuuuck you.
I did have a really good Falstad game in HL prior to this, though. That counts for something.
I had a great solo qm (nobody was on) earlier, on spiders, as etc. Started off losing a bunch (they had rushing gank team). We started getting but kept losing team fights. At one point i got 4 of them in a mosh and my team who was all nearby did nothing with it. They pushed us back to our keeps. We won a team fight, got our first spider turn in, and went for boss, but they got there before we got it and killed 3 of us and stole it.
They could have won the game here, our core got to 63%, but i think they all left to finish off the spiders. Then started streaming into it base one by one and got picked off. We cleared through mid keep and a bit of shields on core and they got 3 of us again (people ignoring run away pings). Then they sat on their hands again while we resed, wiped them in a team fight near our base, and finished off their core.
They could have easily won a couple of times but they choose not to fit some reason.
We also could have easily kept throwing and starting blame games, but everyone was super positive even while losing. I think that helped too for sure.
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You didn't get to use him TOO much but he was basically the SINGLE Protoss that made any sense and knew Kerrigan was bad news bear and never backed off from his position (aside from Fenix who was a victim of just being a bad-ass-MOFO but ultimately just a warrior/soldier). To the point where he was the only one left alive to try and stop Aiur from being taken over.
He then single-handedly takes a carrier and kamikaze-crashes it in a hive to try and stop zerg's expansion into Aiur (I don't think it worked though).
You're rooting for Tassadar the entire time.
Artanis is like a 15-year old recruit so you never really connect with him in BW.
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This. They need to do something about TTK, because right now it's way too short. Buff HP, increasing healing, decrease damage, whatever.
That's not a problem with new releases though. Look at Rehgar. He got a solid rework without needing to stop new releases. And he ended up overpowered to boot. It's just a problem across the board for the game since the scaling changes, not an issue with releasing new stuff.
For whatever reason they somehow ended up upping damage compared to health. Of everything. Heroes, minions, buildings, everything. And so Time To Kill is still too low for everything.
I too welcome the reign of warriors and specialists again. Top 3 damage winrates are specialists already.
Yawn. Warrior meta is already extremely popular in Asia, nerfing all assassins just makes that happen everywhere.
Yeah he was there and he was the sort of hero of the whole affair (in that he's the guy you spend the whole campaign trying to find, then trying to help, then trying to rescue, then trying to help again).
But my point was that he wasn't really notable as a unit in the game and you almost never controlled him anyway. Playwise there's not really much of a fantasy there to build off of specifically related to his character.
Yeah I actually kinda like the way things are right now, after letting things simmer, I mean. Low TTK means it's a lot easier to punish people who are out of position. And subsequently, yourself as well, though it just means you gotta have better positioning and play safer. But I love making plays, I love jumping on dudes who are clearly too far forward, whether in lane or teamfights.
There's a few outliers, as always. Li-Ming absolutely still needs nerfs. Kael's Chainbomb is still bullshit. Things like that.
But I kinda dig the game as it is, now. I mean hell, apparently one of the biggest complains the HotS team was getting was that the game wasn't lethal enough. Welp, now it is.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
I'd agree twice if I could.
They need to lower damage across the board by 10% for everyone? I mean, haven't they already been doing that slowly over time with these new Wednesday balance patches? That's what they've been doing, I mean. They're continuing to do so.
They need to give roles passive buffs? I mean, Don't those things kind of already exist? Assassins already shit out tons of damage. Specialists already push lanes and siege extremely well. Warriors have the highest health pools and various talents/abilities that reduce damage already.
I'm honestly not really seeing this or getting this sentiment at all. I think things are fine, honestly? This is the best state the game has ever been in, outside of those few outliers. I don't think the game needs all these drastic changes that people are bringing up. I think they just need to keep doing what they've been doing, especially with the small Wednesday balance patches, and things will continue to be good.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
Is it?
I feel like hero diversity is still way down from where it was before the scaling changes.
I see way more hero diversity now than before.
I still remember the days of only 3 Heroes in any given role ever being viable, with those slots rotating in and out with patches. The Assassin trifecta of Kael, Jaina, and Zeratul, wherein no other Assassin really mattered quite as much. The Warrior trifecta of Johanna, Leoric, and Muradin. So on and so forth.
The scaling changes did a lot to increase diversity. We have lots and lots of different Heroes seeing play now. ETC and Diablo came back with a vengeance. Stitches is good again now. Sonya shot up in popularity as being the premier Bruiser. And then got nerfed, but she's still great.
Raynor, Thrall, and Greymane have all really risen up as good autoattack Assassins. Falstad, Lunara, and Valla are good non-Mage ranged picks.
Supports... Well, I'll admit they're not in the best spot right now. Buuuut aside from Rehgod, we're still seeing Morales, Tassadar, Tyrande, Kharazim, Malfurion all being pretty common picks in competitive. Brightwing has risen in popularity too, as a specific answer to some Heroes. Uther has strangely fallen out of grace a bit, most likely because of Rehgod. But he's still good too.
Diversity's here, man.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
because now it doesn't matter what hero you play since you'll just be splattered all over the pavement in 1.5 seconds
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Imagine if they had kept the TTK the same while still keeping the scaling changes and increasing rez timers across the board. I think this would have had functionally a very similar effect on the meta but would've kept the game much more active in terms of time actually spent fighting instead of time spent running around the map avoiding each other while trying to get a level lead.
Like, you watch all the pro games and it's the same thing. There are rarely any actual fights anymore. Even when there are fights, often teams will pull out prematurely once it starts going south. The way things are shaping up, you are often better off simply conceding or stalling an objective while trying to catch back up in levels or make some kind of trade happen in exchange for losing the objective.
I get where they're going with it, but I think there are ways to make it so that you spend more time actually fighting. I want to duke it out and blow up some mans. Like, you can barely even poke in a lane anymore. Most of the time you just end up waiting for whatever minion wave shows up based on the hero matchup and team rotations, and clearing it while it's at the wall, because heaven forbid you step out farther than 3 feet or you will get torched. I don't want to just spend all game rotating and clearing waves and timing merc camps.
I'm not coming from this as a huge loser, either. I'm winning a lot more now than I used to - my win rate in the month of February alone is over 65%. Right now, the meta is driving way too much in terms of win rates. I gave the numbers on this several pages ago, but a small minority of heroes are significantly above 51% while the large majority of the rest are below 49%, sometimes drastically in both directions, and the skew only gets worse the higher in skill you go, not better. I could be completely wrong on this, but it felt like there was A LOT more hero variety in terms of being able to mix and match a comp that could actually work even if the hero was ostensibly "not as good" as a counterpart.
@Dibby, let me put it this way - in the past month, in how many of your games have you played Li-Ming or Rehgar? Do you think that maybe your adjustment to the existing meta of hero tiers, conscious or not, may be contributing to your assessment of the state of the game? Because from my own experience, I know for a fact that I just plain won't touch a non-meta hero (see: Illidan) unless I have the firm expectation that I'm just gonna lose that fucking game. Otherwise, I have a much higher-than-likely chance of winning, and it's somehow still boring as fuck because the fights only last 10 seconds at most and I spend the rest of the time like, clearing minion waves. Wooo.
Is it? Cause I'd say the average QM game is still pretty uniform. Hotslogs shows only 17 out of 48 characters at or above 50%. So only about a third of the characters in the game are positive winrates and it's heavily skewed towards the top end of that.
Looking at the Blizzcon finals on the other hand, you had a very diverse selection of heroes used. Alot of the same people in each games but most heroes were used at least once. If I remember information from recent tournaments suggested diversity was down from then, though obviously changed. We'll see more after this weekend.
The scaling changes also seem to have curtailed alot of alternate types of playstyle like sieging and tankiness and more gradual damage because there's so much damage anyone can blow shit to pieces and stuff dies so fast gradual damage doesn't have a chance.
And slower doesn't mean easier. Slower means more thought, strategy, and mid-fight positioning can occur in team battles. Slower means battles aren't over in the duration of a sneeze. Battles aren't decided by whoever can chain their Q->W->E->R the fastest. Slower combat meant that healers were actually valuable as mid-battle contributors to the fight. Now, with the way things are in this super burst meta, healers get to cast 1 heal spell at sometime during the course of the 3 second battle, and then maybe another heal at the end on whoever is still left standing.
http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20045807/
that is pretty awesome.
i have this opinion as well. i wonder if anyone has (or if there even really is an efficient way) tracked average number of cooldown cycles used per fight, or even just average team fight length.
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I sometimes wonder if I've been more anxious about when and how to use Force Wall since the scaling changes, and I think you've brought me to a revelation. I have trouble deciding my placement because I know it will be the only one in a team brawl. When combat was more ponderous, there was room for error, or at least more time to consider where players are going to move. With everyone dying so quickly now, I have one shot -- and if it doesn't do what I need, it's likely at least a partial wipe, where it used to be merely a moderate inconvenience.
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Eh, I'll straight out say that past a certain point, low TTK substantially lowers the skill level of the game. If heroes can consistently be killed in a duration of a single CC, that means that every other skill but "Don't get CCed" is totally subordinated, and it reduces the depth of the game vastly. And, as you note, the balance effects tend to be disproportionate. I'd go so far as to say that the closer you get to extremes, the more wildly skewed things are, and again, the more depth you lose.
Low TTK also entirely hollows out the design space, as any number of things like balanced life steal, non-extreme damage mitigation, etc. become fairly unattractive.
Given 48 heroes and 10 unique ones per game a perfectly balance selection should net you like a 20% pick rate. Obviously that's not gonna happen but it's heavily weighted towards under 15% right now.
Low TTK might increase the need for twitch reflexes, but twitch reflexes are not the only skill that exist. Good judgement, good decision making, good placement, good rotations become more important when the battle lasts longer than 2.5 seconds. When TTK goes up, the need for thought and strategy also goes up.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that firing off all your spells as fast as you can and blowing someone up in a single rotation is the lowest form of skill that exists, because it is a 1-dimensional skill. You are delivering your entire payload and then the battle is over. It's a one-and-done scenario.
In the old meta, when combat often lasted multiple rotations, battles required give and take, push and pull, constant positioning within the battle itself (instead of just at the beginning/end of combat), and a greater degree of awareness of what the rest of your team is doing.
When the entire battle is over in 1 rotation, it really doesn't matter what the rest of the team is doing. All the assassins dump their payloads, the healers triage whoever is alive, and the tanks hope they're still standing. That's really all there is in a single-rotation low-TTK game.
This isn't a perfect analogy, but I think it gets the job done: Think of the old meta as a game of Soccer. The pace of the game is slow, deliberate, and the teams pass the ball a lot and make use of the whole field. The new meta with the single rotation, high-burst, low-TTK battles are like a game of American Football. Everyone lines up, takes their shots, and whoever is left standing at the end won the play.
And I prefer soccer to American Football.
Agree completely. Longer fights mean more chance to eke out small advantages via good play and opens up the design space to more kinds of abilities and heroes and kinds of play. Also more fun imo.
I actually had a long fight a week or two back. Like a drawn out smack each other in the face match between our teams over a shrine on Infernal Shrines. I think it was because it was fairly early and both teams were 2 tank/1 healer set ups with no big bursty characters. And it was really refreshing. Lots of back and forth juking for positioning as everyone got worn down and slowly lost health and mana. Their Muradin put his trait to great use by moving in and out of the fight several times to keep his team in it by returning with alot of his health back. It lasted till we finally caught one of their assassins at about half health and out of position and took him out and then rolled the rest of the team back.
Afterwards everyone was in chat like "man that was an awesome fight".
This isn't how I see it at all. Nobody is getting blown up by a full combo unless they're out of position, or the guy doing the bursting over-extended to do so, in which case you're likely going to trade. All of the things you like still exist in the current meta -- battles aren't over in the duration of a sneeze if nobody got caught out. I've played essentially nothing but Li-Ming since she was released, and I can toss Arcane Orbs into warriors all day long and not make much of an impact. It isn't until someone steps out of line, or I flank around the side to catch the backline while putting myself in a risky position, that she's able to start blowing people up.
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i'd love to hear more developer insight. are they happy with how things are (and it just needs tweaks), should it go back to the way it was, move more in this direction, something entirely different?
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So in direct response to the last paragraph, I went and found out exactly who I played over the last month. This includes QM and HL:
Li-Ming: 31
Zeratul: 12
Rehgar: 9
Murky: 5
Lunara: 4
Johanna: 4
Leoric: 4
Diablo: 2
Chen: 2
Butcher: 2
Muradin: 2
Kerrigan: 1
Tyrael: 1
Nazeebo: 1
So I mean, yeah. I've been playing a lot of Li-Ming. So you might be right about that. I dunno! I'm still finding success and having fun with the game, even when I'm not playing Li-Ming.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
You know, thinking about it some more, I probably wouldn't mind if the game was balanced this way across the board, but the lack of hero balance really bothers me. So I'm kind of lumping in several complaints at once.
At the end of the day, though, the most fun I've ever had playing this game has been with my TL bros (and sis, when @credeiki was around and not playing dirty, dirty LoL), so there's something to be said for being in a cooperative, competitive environment over the long term and being able to work on shit together.
Makes an excellent point about low Time To Kills in the older meta vs new. It's not really something I've thought of before, or at least I wasn't able to bring it to words.
I remember a time (and I have only been playing since July) that a "lost" fight over an objective might only mean that 1 Hero was dead, but the others were forced to Hearth. Now the problem that that entailed (on BoE for a good example) was that death timers were too low and that a team could wipe their opponents while fighting the Immortal only to then get counter wiped by the "fresh" respawn team and end up losing the Immortal race altogether.
Now it seems that I see teams spending most time in "fights" running around in a circle waiting for that perfect engagement moment to dive in or we just die (and spend a long ass time dead) rather than fighting at all.
Longer fights/ TTK might seem to forgiving to those higher on the skill spectrum, but HoTs is designed to appeal to a more conventional and casual player base, which isn't to sat that there can't be strategy there- just that I shouldn't be punished for not having the best split-second decisions or twitch finger skills. If I want that I'll play an FPS.
I honestly rarely find myself taking talents that add to the action bar (1,2,3,4, etc) because oftentimes I'm dead before I can use them. Doubly so if they aren't some form of total damage negation. On the topic of Illidan, I think part of the reasohis tier 7 talents are showing winrate % competition with First Aid is because people are realizing FA isn't nearly as effective at negating the sheer burst he's taking anymore, whereas at 16 Stoneskin is now showing a noticeable advantage over Blood for Blood.
This might also speak to why Illidan is becoming more popular (Rehgod aside)- he's adept at AVOIDING the burst for just long enough to kill off that squishy or Li Ming.
That's just my opinion, I could be wrong, but despite not being the best PLAYER of this game, I'd like to think I good instincts for fights, especially with what I've been seeing lately.
YMMY
Strange that Tyrande has the same win rate as him, I've been Rockin' Doods Faces™ with her.
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yeah
but you still have to figure out the most efficient way to collect all those fucking things
I'm confused, is this also a reference?
This needs to just be spammed at people on Gardens of Fucking Terror.
It's the map with the simplest effective strategy because no one knows wtf they are doing on it. But no one does that strategy because most people somehow don't know wtf they are doing on it.
Take your seeds fast, so you can pressure the other team while they try and get theirs.
It's that simple.
So, my team was Rehgar (myself), Sonya, Abathur, Sylvanas, Lunara.
Vs a 5 stack of Kharazim, Leoric, Thrall, Valla, Li-Ming.
Yeah. Went about as well as you could expect. We had no damage, no kill potential, n o t h i n g. So whatever though, I chalked it up to the matchmaker screwing me.
Sonya kept diving into the entire enemy team. Blamed me for dying 8 times. Said I was doing "half as much" healing as the enemy Kharazim. Yeah, no shit. Cause I can't heal you when you and everyone else goes splat in 1 second flat. Also because Kharazim has inflated heal numbers, no shit his healing is high. Abathur started bitching at the rest of us, saying we were feeding and being awful and losing teamfights and blah blah blah. Okay.
Later I realized the Abathur was grouped with the Sylvanas and Lunara. So you complained about our teamcomp and losing teamfights and YOU WERE THE WHOLE REASON WHY? Fuck you. Fuuuuck you.
I did have a really good Falstad game in HL prior to this, though. That counts for something.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
They could have won the game here, our core got to 63%, but i think they all left to finish off the spiders. Then started streaming into it base one by one and got picked off. We cleared through mid keep and a bit of shields on core and they got 3 of us again (people ignoring run away pings). Then they sat on their hands again while we resed, wiped them in a team fight near our base, and finished off their core.
They could have easily won a couple of times but they choose not to fit some reason.
We also could have easily kept throwing and starting blame games, but everyone was super positive even while losing. I think that helped too for sure.