I shared my opinion last night with the dudes I was playing TL with, but here it is for everyone else:
Tassadar is a High Templar in the Starcraft universe. In that universe, High Templars are the closest thing to a mage you'll see. They have AoE abilities (Psi Storm) and mind-fuck abilities (Hallucination). They are offensive caster units.
In Heroes, Tassadar is not that. They have nerfed and re-nerfed and triple-nerfed both Psi Storm and Archon form until he has no damage left. Psi Storm used to be a strong zoning tool because the damage was high enough that you didn't want to stand in it. The duration was also longer, so it was definitely worthwhile to get out of it. Now-a-days, the damage is so weak it barely tickles, and the duration is so short that it's probably better to just stay and take it than to let yourself be zoned.
Furthermore, High Templar are not support units. They do not have the ability to cast shields and they do not have the ability to project force walls. Other units have those abilities, but not High Templar.
Blizzard completely missed the fantasy with Tassadar. You know what Tassadar is? He's a discipline priest. Or at least the closest thing this game currently has.
My opinion is that Blizzard needs to completely break down Tassadar's kit, re-brand him as a mage, give him back the strength of his damage, and re-distribute his spells that don't fit the fantasy of a High Templar to another character whose existing fantasy more closely fits those abilities.
Give us Anduin Wrynn. Make him a Disc Priest. I've got a great kit for him.
Q: Penance - A short channeled spell with the option to heal or nuke. Let the player decide how to spend this cooldown. While channeling, if you targeted a friendly player, it will do 3 moderately strong pulses of single target healing. If you targeted an enemy it will do 3 moderately strong pulses of damage. Can be interrupted. I would put the power of the heal lower than Uther's big single target heal, but higher than Rehgar's Chain Heal (since there's no AoE component).
W: Power Word Solace: Make this spell a targeted small radius AoE (think of Malfurion's Moonfire.) Enemies caught in the AoE take magic damage, friendlies hit by the AoE get a small amount of mana back (just like in WoW).
E: Power Word Shield: Shield a target. Since my pitch here is to remove Tassadar's shield spell, that would make Anduin the premiere shield giving hero. Give him talents that match the talents in WoW, such as the ability to add a speed boost to the shield.
Trait: Shield Mastery - If Anduin heals a target with an active Power Word Shield, the heal spell is amplified by 15%. This will encourage Anduin to play as a healer while still giving him the option for offensive casting when situationally appropriate.
R1: Archangel - Anduin enters Archangel form, drastically reducing the cooldown on all of his abilities, and causes his offensively cast spells to do a portion of their damage to nearby allies as healing.
R2: Power Word Barrier: Anduin raises a large damage absorbing shield in an area, absorbing a fixed amount of damage to all allies within the shielded area. The shield expires after a set duration or after the maximum amount of damage is absorbed.
I kinda see both sides of the argument here.
Like on one hand (and admittedly I know NOTHING about Starcraft so I'm taking your word on good faith here), yeah, they didn't exactly nail the fantasy. People have said the same about Kerrigan, Diablo, even Arthas.
But on the other hand, completely remaking a character's kit from the ground up takes a lot of work, and doing it simply in the name of "nailing the fantasy" maybe isn't justifiable in terms of putting the resources and time in for that. Especially when said character actually performs fine and well.
I personally tend to look at characters from a mechanical perspective rather than a fantasy perspective. How they actually play and perform, vs how I expect them to play and perform.
I don't think you're wrong or anything. But I do think it's maybe a bit unrealistic to want Blizzard to, yknow, do that. Maybe it's something they'll keep in mind going forward, I mean, right? But it's asking way too much to completely and utterly redo a character, ground up, just to fall in line with fantasy expectations.
It is a legitimate concern, I mean, I'm not dismissing that. But we also gotta accept that some characters aren't going to be how we pictured them to be. I mean, Nazeebo is actually a pretty good example, oddly enough. People look at WD in Diablo 3 and think "yeah man pets pets PETS ZOMBIE DOGS YEAH". And 'Zeebo isn't really how most people would envision the WD, right? I mean I think they did alright, they still gave him some iconic abilities in the end. But not everyone's vision of a character is going to line up with Blizzard's, I guess.
They also talked a bit about this issue when creating Diablo, stating that they tried to do a 1:1 for his representation in D3 into HotS and it just didn't work, at all.
It's a complicated issue. I dunno.
The other part is that many of the early Heroes are just random mishmashes of abilities thrown together. Shit dude, look at Malfurion. He doesn't exactly scream "Resto Druid". He's just "Druid". He's got Regrowth, Roots, and Moonfire. What the fuck kinda weird kit is that, right? The early Heroes really are just remnants from when HotS was supposed to be a SC2 mod. They didn't really know what they were doing, or anything. And, ultimately, we kinda have to live with that now. We have to live with the fact that these early characters are kinda hodge-podge'd together.
Dibby on
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
get off my lawn, scrub. have you even ever played a game from floppy disk. did you ever have to boot something in dos. no. did sit there listening to your modem go BWEEEE wooo bdang bdang kshhhhh SHHHHHHHHHH pshhhh and then scream in rage when somebody else made a phone call when you were in the middle of using the internet.
no
get awf mah lawn
/shakes cane
(do you even know what a floppy disk is)
I do know what a floppy is, yes, but I am a compsci major
my baseline for games from back then are Elder Scrolls Arena (first-person RPG action a full two years earlier) and the first two fallouts (a year or two later, good RPG action in a turn-based manner as is sensible for an isometric view)
get off my lawn, scrub. have you even ever played a game from floppy disk. did you ever have to boot something in dos. no. did sit there listening to your modem go BWEEEE wooo bdang bdang kshhhhh SHHHHHHHHHH pshhhh and then scream in rage when somebody else made a phone call when you were in the middle of using the internet.
no
get awf mah lawn
/shakes cane
(do you even know what a floppy disk is)
Remember code wheels, and how spilling anything on them meant you couldn't play that game anymore? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
get off my lawn, scrub. have you even ever played a game from floppy disk. did you ever have to boot something in dos. no. did sit there listening to your modem go BWEEEE wooo bdang bdang kshhhhh SHHHHHHHHHH pshhhh and then scream in rage when somebody else made a phone call when you were in the middle of using the internet.
no
get awf mah lawn
/shakes cane
(do you even know what a floppy disk is)
Remember code wheels, and how spilling anything on them meant you couldn't play that game anymore? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Non xeroxable code charts were what the cool kids had.
ah, aight. that's where pudge got that line from, then
also that is some THRILLING combat right there
That's because that guy is both overgeared for the encounter and knew what to expect. There's a reason The Butcher became iconic and it's not because of people playing for the 50th time for youtube.
And also because it's the start of the game, so it's fairly easy at that point. Diablo is a very different style game from D2 or D3 and the combat mechanics are not being shown off there.
I shared my opinion last night with the dudes I was playing TL with, but here it is for everyone else:
Tassadar is a High Templar in the Starcraft universe. In that universe, High Templars are the closest thing to a mage you'll see. They have AoE abilities (Psi Storm) and mind-fuck abilities (Hallucination). They are offensive caster units.
In Heroes, Tassadar is not that. They have nerfed and re-nerfed and triple-nerfed both Psi Storm and Archon form until he has no damage left. Psi Storm used to be a strong zoning tool because the damage was high enough that you didn't want to stand in it. The duration was also longer, so it was definitely worthwhile to get out of it. Now-a-days, the damage is so weak it barely tickles, and the duration is so short that it's probably better to just stay and take it than to let yourself be zoned.
Furthermore, High Templar are not support units. They do not have the ability to cast shields and they do not have the ability to project force walls. Other units have those abilities, but not High Templar.
Blizzard completely missed the fantasy with Tassadar. You know what Tassadar is? He's a discipline priest. Or at least the closest thing this game currently has.
My opinion is that Blizzard needs to completely break down Tassadar's kit, re-brand him as a mage, give him back the strength of his damage, and re-distribute his spells that don't fit the fantasy of a High Templar to another character whose existing fantasy more closely fits those abilities.
Give us Anduin Wrynn. Make him a Disc Priest. I've got a great kit for him.
Q: Penance - A short channeled spell with the option to heal or nuke. Let the player decide how to spend this cooldown. While channeling, if you targeted a friendly player, it will do 3 moderately strong pulses of single target healing. If you targeted an enemy it will do 3 moderately strong pulses of damage. Can be interrupted. I would put the power of the heal lower than Uther's big single target heal, but higher than Rehgar's Chain Heal (since there's no AoE component).
W: Power Word Solace: Make this spell a targeted small radius AoE (think of Malfurion's Moonfire.) Enemies caught in the AoE take magic damage, friendlies hit by the AoE get a small amount of mana back (just like in WoW).
E: Power Word Shield: Shield a target. Since my pitch here is to remove Tassadar's shield spell, that would make Anduin the premiere shield giving hero. Give him talents that match the talents in WoW, such as the ability to add a speed boost to the shield.
Trait: Shield Mastery - If Anduin heals a target with an active Power Word Shield, the heal spell is amplified by 15%. This will encourage Anduin to play as a healer while still giving him the option for offensive casting when situationally appropriate.
R1: Archangel - Anduin enters Archangel form, drastically reducing the cooldown on all of his abilities, and causes his offensively cast spells to do a portion of their damage to nearby allies as healing.
R2: Power Word Barrier: Anduin raises a large damage absorbing shield in an area, absorbing a fixed amount of damage to all allies within the shielded area. The shield expires after a set duration or after the maximum amount of damage is absorbed.
I kinda see both sides of the argument here.
Like on one hand (and admittedly I know NOTHING about Starcraft so I'm taking your word on good faith here), yeah, they didn't exactly nail the fantasy. People have said the same about Kerrigan, Diablo, even Arthas.
Gotta disagree here. The only one that maybe counts here is Kerrigan. But Diablo and Arthas imo are pretty dead on.
Diablo is quite good I think. A bit odd at first maybe, but basically all his moves are there and his D1 and D2 look is a big hulking bruiser who spits fire at you and charges around. Mostly his D2 look and feel really, which is what he seems to be based on. They import a few abilities from D3 though. But he's basically a guy you want to avoid spending to much time near.
Arthas is probably the best as he's pretty much Arthas straight out of Halls of Reflection. Marches towards you slowly but surely and locks you down.
Also, cause you mention it later, Malf screams caster druid to me. Especially from back before Moonkin. Moonfire spam, roots and heals baby.
But on the other hand, completely remaking a character's kit from the ground up takes a lot of work, and doing it simply in the name of "nailing the fantasy" maybe isn't justifiable in terms of putting the resources and time in for that. Especially when said character actually performs fine and well.
I personally tend to look at characters from a mechanical perspective rather than a fantasy perspective. How they actually play and perform, vs how I expect them to play and perform.
I don't think you're wrong or anything. But I do think it's maybe a bit unrealistic to want Blizzard to, yknow, do that. Maybe it's something they'll keep in mind going forward, I mean, right? But it's asking way too much to completely and utterly redo a character, ground up, just to fall in line with fantasy expectations.
It is a legitimate concern, I mean, I'm not dismissing that. But we also gotta accept that some characters aren't going to be how we pictured them to be. I mean, Nazeebo is actually a pretty good example, oddly enough. People look at WD in Diablo 3 and think "yeah man pets pets PETS ZOMBIE DOGS YEAH". And 'Zeebo isn't really how most people would envision the WD, right? I mean I think they did alright, they still gave him some iconic abilities in the end. But not everyone's vision of a character is going to line up with Blizzard's, I guess.
They also talked a bit about this issue when creating Diablo, stating that they tried to do a 1:1 for his representation in D3 into HotS and it just didn't work, at all.
It's a complicated issue. I dunno.
The other part is that many of the early Heroes are just random mishmashes of abilities thrown together. Shit dude, look at Malfurion. He doesn't exactly scream "Resto Druid". He's just "Druid". He's got Regrowth, Roots, and Moonfire. What the fuck kinda weird kit is that, right? The early Heroes really are just remnants from when HotS was supposed to be a SC2 mod. They didn't really know what they were doing, or anything. And, ultimately, we kinda have to live with that now. We have to live with the fact that these early characters are kinda hodge-podge'd together.
I don't think there's any reason to fully overhaul Tassadar. The problem is he has no damage spec and he really should. Both from a gameplay and from a fantasy perspective. Look at Malf as an example of how Tassadar should be able to function. Spec right and Malf can be a beast. Tassadar needs that back.
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
the problem, and what probably made him OP before, is how gitdang unkillable Tass is if played right. Give him damage and now you have an unkillable assassin. This is a Bad Idea.
the problem, and what probably made him OP before, is how gitdang unkillable Tass is if played right. Give him damage and now you have an unkillable assassin. This is a Bad Idea.
That's not a problem at all. He's only unkillable with talents. That's why you set those talents against damage ones. That's the core of how the talent system works. It's easy peasy.
the problem, and what probably made him OP before, is how gitdang unkillable Tass is if played right. Give him damage and now you have an unkillable assassin. This is a Bad Idea.
That's not a problem at all. He's only unkillable with talents. That's why you set those talents against damage ones. That's the core of how the talent system works. It's easy peasy.
So basically, he can dial a toughness? Either deadly assassin, unkillable jerk, or arbitrary point between?
I definitely agree they could probably stand to bump Tass's damage up a bit. Through talents, anyway. Though maybe a small base increase on his W wouldn't hurt. Archon should definitely get a buff as well, it was overnerfed.
I mean, I think Tass's Support build is in a pretty good spot right now though. Khala's Embrace and Leeching Plasma are great talents, Prescience and Dimensional Warp give him great defensive options. His offensive options are kinda lacking though.
the problem, and what probably made him OP before, is how gitdang unkillable Tass is if played right. Give him damage and now you have an unkillable assassin. This is a Bad Idea.
That's not a problem at all. He's only unkillable with talents. That's why you set those talents against damage ones. That's the core of how the talent system works. It's easy peasy.
So basically, he can dial a toughness? Either deadly assassin, unkillable jerk, or arbitrary point between?
I mean, yeah. That's the point of the talent system. To force you to choose between options so you can't be everything.
I mean, we already see this in Tassadar. At 16 he's got his big ("big") damage ("damage") talent, his super unkillable talent and his situationally useful but really nice shielding talent and you can only do one of those. Same thing at lvl 7 with his other damage talent vs the talent that makes his shield viable for solo support.
The main issue for Tassadar right now is that his damage spec sucks and isn't worth taking (so there goes that dilemma) and his healing options at 13 and 16 are non-existent or situational so it's basically always better to go full heal in the low side and full unkillable in the high side.
And tomorrow is cheap(er) Chromie so I can start leveling her and waiting for the inevitable buff.
Youuuu're gonna be waiting a long time, sir. Here's what's gonna happen:
- Small health buff Soon™. This could even be this week with the Wednesday patch. Maybe not though.
- So that'll bump up her winrate just a tiiiiny bit. Not really a lot, not enough to matter. Maybe 1-2%. Blizz will wait a long time again before even doing anything else at this point.
- Then, they'll finally make another change. It'll be something small. It won't be the thing she needs. It won't matter in the long run. Possible that they'll even do something stupid like buffing her damage, which would 100% be the wrong thing to do.
- Rinse repeat a few more times until they finally break down make a big drastic change that she actually needs. Yknow, like base Feral Lunge for Rehgar or base Zealot Charge for Artanis, something along those lines.
Chromie's situation right now reminds me of on-release Lunara or Artanis. Heroes with seemingly good potential.... but they were traaaash at the start and it took them forever to get them where they should be.
And tomorrow is cheap(er) Chromie so I can start leveling her and waiting for the inevitable buff.
Youuuu're gonna be waiting a long time, sir. Here's what's gonna happen:
- Small health buff Soon™. This could even be this week with the Wednesday patch. Maybe not though.
- So that'll bump up her winrate just a tiiiiny bit. Not really a lot, not enough to matter. Maybe 1-2%. Blizz will wait a long time again before even doing anything else at this point.
- Then, they'll finally make another change. It'll be something small. It won't be the thing she needs. It won't matter in the long run. Possible that they'll even do something stupid like buffing her damage, which would 100% be the wrong thing to do.
- Rinse repeat a few more times until they finally break down make a big drastic change that she actually needs. Yknow, like base Feral Lunge for Rehgar or base Zealot Charge for Artanis, something along those lines.
Chromie's situation right now reminds me of on-release Lunara or Artanis. Heroes with seemingly good potential.... but they were traaaash at the start and it took them forever to get them where they should be.
They've been pretty good with the hotfix nerfs so I think it'll go faster then that.
But I don't think Chromie is at all like Lunara or Artanis. Lunara was just too little damage for how she played and Artanis was just screwed by not having any gap closer on a character that needed to stay in melee. Chromie is, like, fundamentally fucked in her current setup. She's a low health, no mobility, all skill shot hero in a game where they just added a ton of high damage and/or high mobility heroes. The problem is more then numbers or giving her a talent as baseline.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Yeah I was thinking they could make one of her ults part of her baseline kit, rather than giving her the "one level early" power spike thing (which is, frankly, not that useful). Just a random idea though, not a serious one.
TBH her kit as a whole is pretty underwhelming. She's basically a long-range mage instead of a "master of time". Tracer's Recall, all by itself, feels like something that represents Chromie more than anything in Chromie's kit.
Slowing Sands is a worse version of Earthquake (which itself pales in comparison to Sunder). It has nothing to do with time. Temporal Loop is a timed teleport and doesn't do stuff like turn back time for the target (which, granted, would likely make it a less powerful ability). Time Trap is OK, but it's basically a single-target VP.
If you think about crazy ways her kit could be built to really show off that she can manipulate time, it does start to beg some serious questions about whether or not some of those things are even desirable (for example, the stasis effect is arguably preferable for the Chromie player than something which just teleports them backwards, because you know exactly where they will be when they "pop"). But I feel like a lot of her ability decisions were made with these and other considerations in mind, which slowly but surely changed her "fantasy focus" from being a member of the Bronze Dragonflight to "just another mage". Jaina is very clearly a frost mage. Kael is very clearly a fire mage. Hell, even Li-Ming is very clearly a generic wizard. But Chromie is like, a generic wizard whose abilities are sand-themed or something.
Why doesn't Sand Blast do something like increase the target's cooldown timers? Dragon's Breath should do something like cause all friendly targeted abilities (like heals) to take effect only after a delay. Stuff like that would go a long way towards making her feel like what she is "supposed" to be.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
get off my lawn, scrub. have you even ever played a game from floppy disk. did you ever have to boot something in dos. no. did sit there listening to your modem go BWEEEE wooo bdang bdang kshhhhh SHHHHHHHHHH pshhhh and then scream in rage when somebody else made a phone call when you were in the middle of using the internet.
no
get awf mah lawn
/shakes cane
(do you even know what a floppy disk is)
I actually just pulled my floppy disks and usb a: drive out of the basement. First thing I did was check if disk one of after dark still worked.
get off my lawn, scrub. have you even ever played a game from floppy disk. did you ever have to boot something in dos. no. did sit there listening to your modem go BWEEEE wooo bdang bdang kshhhhh SHHHHHHHHHH pshhhh and then scream in rage when somebody else made a phone call when you were in the middle of using the internet.
no
get awf mah lawn
/shakes cane
(do you even know what a floppy disk is)
I actually just pulled my floppy disks and usb a: drive out of the basement. First thing I did was check if disk one of after dark still worked.
Somewhere down there, I *think* I still have Ultima: Underworld and the first Might and Magic.
Man U:U is especially... see, I played that game at age 5. My parents taught 5 year old me -- who, mind you, *could barely read at that point* -- how to load that floppy in DOS and the basics of the game. My 3 year old brother sat next to me and together, we were terrified of many things and wanted to be friends with goblins (the green goblins would be friends. orange, not so much)
I don't think we got very far though. As for Might and Magic, I watched my parents play that one... I think we also still have my parents hand-drawn area maps. HAND DRAWN!!! No automapping for you, they drew that shit on graph paper. They're actually really gorgeous, my mom went to town with colored pencils. It helps that mom was also an old skool (1978 blue box) D&D player and my dad majored in advertising... But anyway, I didn't play because M&M was heavily text based and while Ultima: Underworld had a lot of visual cues to help you out, MM did not.
ANYWAY
Back to HOTS talk
This is all very nice but when's my boy Medivh coming out. I want to start polymorph bounce trolling people.
ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
I lost a game versus the AI last night. Adept AI. So annoyed and pissed by the end of that game.
IIRC it was our Tracer (me), Falstad, Illidan, Nazeebo, Butcher v Lunara, Tychus, Vikings, Greymane, Kael'thas on Sky Temple
Our Nazeebo dropped early so we had an AI in that spot which didn't go well for some reason. We never completely controlled a temple and eventually lost. End of game stats showed that Falstad died 15+ times (!) with no kills! Illidan was nearly as bad, with Butcher somewhat pulling his weight. I was the only one with double digit kills/assists and I had the most Siege and Hero damage by far.
But I mean I can't carry the team as Tracer. And every matchup felt like a nightmare. Kael'thas living bombs HURT with a small health pool, especially when paired up with poison from Lunara. Vikings had range to deal with me while also having melee to get in my face and zone me, although if I stuck one with a pulse bomb the AI was dumb enough to keep them together and take the full damage. Tychus was a pain to deal with because he too can damage me while moving and he hurts much worse. Greymane was an easy kill, though, so that was nice.
Good news is that by the end I learned exact timing for Recalling off deadly poison ticks and living bomb damage
Really badly designed. Just, wtf were they thinking.
She's way too fragile and lacking in defences for what she offers. Her range is good but not good enough to put you out of danger in most fights and of course since you are often so far away once you are jumped, no one can save you. And you sure as fuck can't save yourself.
And her damage is just ... not good enough. It's just not impactful enough for the downsides to the character. I can land by shots and I still feel like a liability to the team because I offer nothing but poke.
Feels like Li-Ming if they took away the burst, the easiness and the survivability.
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Yeah I gotta be honest and say that I'm not sure simply tweaking some numbers is going to fix Chromie. Even if they get her balanced more appropriately, there's very little in her kit that is fun to play with or against, and she very much fails the "live the fantasy" test. If I wanted to play a long-range burst mage then I'd just play Li-Ming.
Also, the width on her Q is STUPID small. Like, ridiculously so. Fucking Falstad's hammer looks smaller in the graphic but has a way wider hitbox then this stupid thing.
Chromie's just kind of a mess on every level. They took a character who is supposed to be a dragon that can futz with time and did... jack and shit with it. They made a shittier Li Ming, in a meta that's already full to burst with damage dealers, who does no dragoning and barely any time manipulation. I think I'm more disappointed that she had the potential to be a REALLY cool character and then they just dropped the ball. The fact that they dropped the ball in the worst possible way (outside of making her crazy overpowered) is probably just icing. Like, if they didn't have time to workshop a better kit, then just don't do Chromie. Do one of the billion other mages in their games.
I don't ever visit the official forums (because they're a cesspit of nerd rage and idiocy) and I don't really even browse the Heroes subredit.
But I'm curious what the rest of the internet's opinion of Chromie is since the PA community is just a small representation of the overall Heroes playerbase.
Is everyone as disappointed with her as we are? Surely someone at Blizzard has heard the feedback that her kit is a total letdown and that they totally missed the mark with a time-altering dragon who behaves neither as a dragon, or barely as a time-alterer.
I'm beginning to wonder if the reason we've heard nothing about changes to Chromie is that her winrate is so bad, and it really is unprecedentedly bad from what we see on HOTSLOGS with the lowest numbers ever at every skill level, that they are looking in to something drastic.
Yeah, I mean at a 31% win-rate or whatever she's at now, that's so bad that an entire overhaul is already required. Just tweaking a HP number or giving her a bit more damage is not going to be enough. And in fact damage is definitely the wrong way to go. Her damage is fine. It's landing the damage that is the issue. But if she hits a Q->W combo, someone is gonna be very unhealthy (or dead).
They just need to make her kit more fun to play. Scrap it and try again. I was sooooo excited for her and completely disappointed by what they delivered.
Posts
I kinda see both sides of the argument here.
Like on one hand (and admittedly I know NOTHING about Starcraft so I'm taking your word on good faith here), yeah, they didn't exactly nail the fantasy. People have said the same about Kerrigan, Diablo, even Arthas.
But on the other hand, completely remaking a character's kit from the ground up takes a lot of work, and doing it simply in the name of "nailing the fantasy" maybe isn't justifiable in terms of putting the resources and time in for that. Especially when said character actually performs fine and well.
I personally tend to look at characters from a mechanical perspective rather than a fantasy perspective. How they actually play and perform, vs how I expect them to play and perform.
I don't think you're wrong or anything. But I do think it's maybe a bit unrealistic to want Blizzard to, yknow, do that. Maybe it's something they'll keep in mind going forward, I mean, right? But it's asking way too much to completely and utterly redo a character, ground up, just to fall in line with fantasy expectations.
It is a legitimate concern, I mean, I'm not dismissing that. But we also gotta accept that some characters aren't going to be how we pictured them to be. I mean, Nazeebo is actually a pretty good example, oddly enough. People look at WD in Diablo 3 and think "yeah man pets pets PETS ZOMBIE DOGS YEAH". And 'Zeebo isn't really how most people would envision the WD, right? I mean I think they did alright, they still gave him some iconic abilities in the end. But not everyone's vision of a character is going to line up with Blizzard's, I guess.
They also talked a bit about this issue when creating Diablo, stating that they tried to do a 1:1 for his representation in D3 into HotS and it just didn't work, at all.
It's a complicated issue. I dunno.
The other part is that many of the early Heroes are just random mishmashes of abilities thrown together. Shit dude, look at Malfurion. He doesn't exactly scream "Resto Druid". He's just "Druid". He's got Regrowth, Roots, and Moonfire. What the fuck kinda weird kit is that, right? The early Heroes really are just remnants from when HotS was supposed to be a SC2 mod. They didn't really know what they were doing, or anything. And, ultimately, we kinda have to live with that now. We have to live with the fact that these early characters are kinda hodge-podge'd together.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
I do know what a floppy is, yes, but I am a compsci major
my baseline for games from back then are Elder Scrolls Arena (first-person RPG action a full two years earlier) and the first two fallouts (a year or two later, good RPG action in a turn-based manner as is sensible for an isometric view)
edit:
I'm a 20 year old fresh college grad, if that helps
you spend the first hour of that game killing rats
you can run past the rats and be on to the rest of the game in literally like a minute :P
Remember code wheels, and how spilling anything on them meant you couldn't play that game anymore? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Steam: TimIsOnSteam
Battle.net: TimIsOnBnet#1745
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Non xeroxable code charts were what the cool kids had.
That's because that guy is both overgeared for the encounter and knew what to expect. There's a reason The Butcher became iconic and it's not because of people playing for the 50th time for youtube.
And also because it's the start of the game, so it's fairly easy at that point. Diablo is a very different style game from D2 or D3 and the combat mechanics are not being shown off there.
Gotta disagree here. The only one that maybe counts here is Kerrigan. But Diablo and Arthas imo are pretty dead on.
Diablo is quite good I think. A bit odd at first maybe, but basically all his moves are there and his D1 and D2 look is a big hulking bruiser who spits fire at you and charges around. Mostly his D2 look and feel really, which is what he seems to be based on. They import a few abilities from D3 though. But he's basically a guy you want to avoid spending to much time near.
Arthas is probably the best as he's pretty much Arthas straight out of Halls of Reflection. Marches towards you slowly but surely and locks you down.
Also, cause you mention it later, Malf screams caster druid to me. Especially from back before Moonkin. Moonfire spam, roots and heals baby.
I don't think there's any reason to fully overhaul Tassadar. The problem is he has no damage spec and he really should. Both from a gameplay and from a fantasy perspective. Look at Malf as an example of how Tassadar should be able to function. Spec right and Malf can be a beast. Tassadar needs that back.
That's not a problem at all. He's only unkillable with talents. That's why you set those talents against damage ones. That's the core of how the talent system works. It's easy peasy.
So basically, he can dial a toughness? Either deadly assassin, unkillable jerk, or arbitrary point between?
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I mean, I think Tass's Support build is in a pretty good spot right now though. Khala's Embrace and Leeching Plasma are great talents, Prescience and Dimensional Warp give him great defensive options. His offensive options are kinda lacking though.
But he's in a good spot overall, I think.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
I mean, yeah. That's the point of the talent system. To force you to choose between options so you can't be everything.
I mean, we already see this in Tassadar. At 16 he's got his big ("big") damage ("damage") talent, his super unkillable talent and his situationally useful but really nice shielding talent and you can only do one of those. Same thing at lvl 7 with his other damage talent vs the talent that makes his shield viable for solo support.
The main issue for Tassadar right now is that his damage spec sucks and isn't worth taking (so there goes that dilemma) and his healing options at 13 and 16 are non-existent or situational so it's basically always better to go full heal in the low side and full unkillable in the high side.
And tomorrow is cheap(er) Chromie so I can start leveling her and waiting for the inevitable buff.
Youuuu're gonna be waiting a long time, sir. Here's what's gonna happen:
- Small health buff Soon™. This could even be this week with the Wednesday patch. Maybe not though.
- So that'll bump up her winrate just a tiiiiny bit. Not really a lot, not enough to matter. Maybe 1-2%. Blizz will wait a long time again before even doing anything else at this point.
- Then, they'll finally make another change. It'll be something small. It won't be the thing she needs. It won't matter in the long run. Possible that they'll even do something stupid like buffing her damage, which would 100% be the wrong thing to do.
- Rinse repeat a few more times until they finally break down make a big drastic change that she actually needs. Yknow, like base Feral Lunge for Rehgar or base Zealot Charge for Artanis, something along those lines.
Chromie's situation right now reminds me of on-release Lunara or Artanis. Heroes with seemingly good potential.... but they were traaaash at the start and it took them forever to get them where they should be.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
They've been pretty good with the hotfix nerfs so I think it'll go faster then that.
But I don't think Chromie is at all like Lunara or Artanis. Lunara was just too little damage for how she played and Artanis was just screwed by not having any gap closer on a character that needed to stay in melee. Chromie is, like, fundamentally fucked in her current setup. She's a low health, no mobility, all skill shot hero in a game where they just added a ton of high damage and/or high mobility heroes. The problem is more then numbers or giving her a talent as baseline.
TBH her kit as a whole is pretty underwhelming. She's basically a long-range mage instead of a "master of time". Tracer's Recall, all by itself, feels like something that represents Chromie more than anything in Chromie's kit.
Slowing Sands is a worse version of Earthquake (which itself pales in comparison to Sunder). It has nothing to do with time. Temporal Loop is a timed teleport and doesn't do stuff like turn back time for the target (which, granted, would likely make it a less powerful ability). Time Trap is OK, but it's basically a single-target VP.
If you think about crazy ways her kit could be built to really show off that she can manipulate time, it does start to beg some serious questions about whether or not some of those things are even desirable (for example, the stasis effect is arguably preferable for the Chromie player than something which just teleports them backwards, because you know exactly where they will be when they "pop"). But I feel like a lot of her ability decisions were made with these and other considerations in mind, which slowly but surely changed her "fantasy focus" from being a member of the Bronze Dragonflight to "just another mage". Jaina is very clearly a frost mage. Kael is very clearly a fire mage. Hell, even Li-Ming is very clearly a generic wizard. But Chromie is like, a generic wizard whose abilities are sand-themed or something.
Why doesn't Sand Blast do something like increase the target's cooldown timers? Dragon's Breath should do something like cause all friendly targeted abilities (like heals) to take effect only after a delay. Stuff like that would go a long way towards making her feel like what she is "supposed" to be.
I actually just pulled my floppy disks and usb a: drive out of the basement. First thing I did was check if disk one of after dark still worked.
Somewhere down there, I *think* I still have Ultima: Underworld and the first Might and Magic.
Man U:U is especially... see, I played that game at age 5. My parents taught 5 year old me -- who, mind you, *could barely read at that point* -- how to load that floppy in DOS and the basics of the game. My 3 year old brother sat next to me and together, we were terrified of many things and wanted to be friends with goblins (the green goblins would be friends. orange, not so much)
I don't think we got very far though. As for Might and Magic, I watched my parents play that one... I think we also still have my parents hand-drawn area maps. HAND DRAWN!!! No automapping for you, they drew that shit on graph paper. They're actually really gorgeous, my mom went to town with colored pencils. It helps that mom was also an old skool (1978 blue box) D&D player and my dad majored in advertising... But anyway, I didn't play because M&M was heavily text based and while Ultima: Underworld had a lot of visual cues to help you out, MM did not.
ANYWAY
Back to HOTS talk
This is all very nice but when's my boy Medivh coming out. I want to start polymorph bounce trolling people.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
What else would work?
IIRC it was our Tracer (me), Falstad, Illidan, Nazeebo, Butcher v Lunara, Tychus, Vikings, Greymane, Kael'thas on Sky Temple
Our Nazeebo dropped early so we had an AI in that spot which didn't go well for some reason. We never completely controlled a temple and eventually lost. End of game stats showed that Falstad died 15+ times (!) with no kills! Illidan was nearly as bad, with Butcher somewhat pulling his weight. I was the only one with double digit kills/assists and I had the most Siege and Hero damage by far.
But I mean I can't carry the team as Tracer. And every matchup felt like a nightmare. Kael'thas living bombs HURT with a small health pool, especially when paired up with poison from Lunara. Vikings had range to deal with me while also having melee to get in my face and zone me, although if I stuck one with a pulse bomb the AI was dumb enough to keep them together and take the full damage. Tychus was a pain to deal with because he too can damage me while moving and he hurts much worse. Greymane was an easy kill, though, so that was nice.
Good news is that by the end I learned exact timing for Recalling off deadly poison ticks and living bomb damage
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It ain't perfect (I don't like either ult) but it's got solid ideas and I like the support style.
Really badly designed. Just, wtf were they thinking.
She's way too fragile and lacking in defences for what she offers. Her range is good but not good enough to put you out of danger in most fights and of course since you are often so far away once you are jumped, no one can save you. And you sure as fuck can't save yourself.
And her damage is just ... not good enough. It's just not impactful enough for the downsides to the character. I can land by shots and I still feel like a liability to the team because I offer nothing but poke.
Feels like Li-Ming if they took away the burst, the easiness and the survivability.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
I'm looking forward to Medivh at least.
I couldn't have made a funnier joke if I'd tried.
Had great success with him in HL this last week.
But I'm curious what the rest of the internet's opinion of Chromie is since the PA community is just a small representation of the overall Heroes playerbase.
Is everyone as disappointed with her as we are? Surely someone at Blizzard has heard the feedback that her kit is a total letdown and that they totally missed the mark with a time-altering dragon who behaves neither as a dragon, or barely as a time-alterer.
No survivability and no damage to make up for that, especially given how hard her abilities are to land.
Also her complete lack of viability in PvE, which is a HUGE liability.
They just need to make her kit more fun to play. Scrap it and try again. I was sooooo excited for her and completely disappointed by what they delivered.