Is there a new opportunity to do placement matches?
I did mine long ago. I suspect I'd get a different result if I did them now.
Start of every new Season will give you new placement matches. 10 this time, it's possible they'll adjust the number in the future. Like Pre-Season was 20 which was goddamn absurd.
Uncertainty will also be increased. This is, in short, the amount of MMR you gain or lose per game. So for example, I currently gain 10-12 MMR per game on average, right? Increased Uncertainty means that goes up to about 100 or so. In effect, this means you'll have a bit more control over where you land, and gives you a way to climb up if you're really stuck.
Is the general PA population switching over to unranked draft? Since there are no party restrictions there limited who can group I assume that's how it will shake out based on what people ha e been saying.
As a QM diehard it is unfortunate. However given the buffs to anub'arak and arthas I at least will get to play them so it is sort of a wash.
Is the general PA population switching over to unranked draft? Since there are no party restrictions there limited who can group I assume that's how it will shake out based on what people ha e been saying.
As a QM diehard it is unfortunate. However given the buffs to anub'arak and arthas I at least will get to play them so it is sort of a wash.
Nah. I'mma still play QM.
QM is great when I log in and go "I just want to play THIS Hero, straight up." QM is great when I just want to chill.
I've been playing Chen for the first time and I think my game sense for playing a tank is severely lacking. My brew timing probably isn't helping. I'll engage, start taking hits, and since Chen doesn't really have any escapes (unless you get lucky enough for someone you can kick to be behind the front line) and there are rarely healers in QM, my only option to stay in the team fight longer is... to drink brew in the middle of the entire opposing team.
It's around this time that my team - without fail - completely disperses in every direction, leaving me alone with my last drink before a five-man firing squad brings me the sweet release of death. I think I ended a game last night with 10 deaths. :?
I've been playing Chen for the first time and I think my game sense for playing a tank is severely lacking. My brew timing probably isn't helping. I'll engage, start taking hits, and since Chen doesn't really have any escapes (unless you get lucky enough for someone you can kick to be behind the front line) and there are rarely healers in QM, my only option to stay in the team fight longer is... to drink brew in the middle of the entire opposing team.
It's around this time that my team - without fail - completely disperses in every direction, leaving me alone with my last drink before a five-man firing squad brings me the sweet release of death. I think I ended a game last night with 10 deaths. :?
Eh, if you're losing a fight and the tank sacrifices himself to save the other 4, it's actually not a bad trade. Certainly better than a wipe.
With Chen, what you want to do is unload all your abilities, then chug for the full time. Every single one of your cooldowns is 5 seconds. You can chug for 5 seconds. So kick, keg, fire, then chug until your kick is up again, and repeat. You turn into a big block of obnoxiousness in the middle of their formation that they can't easily kill/hurt, and that randomly dishes out damage. If you go earth/wind/fire for your ult, and take the upgrade at 20, you really start to dish out heavy damage using this strategy lategame. I've been over 80k damage with Chen using this plan before, and that was pre-damage boost.
Brewmaster's Balance is also an auto-pick at 7. The 20% move speed boost when you're below 50 brew is just too ridiculous to pass up. It's a pretty solid psuedo escape if you need it.
XBL: Morgan Coke Yes, there is a space, not an underscore. I'm old school like that.
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I think both modes will continue to have their place. QM is for leveling dudes, raising your skill with a character, and building muscle memory since you're always guaranteed to get the hero you want.
I personally get extremely irritated by mirror matches. The more mirrored heroes there are the more annoyed I get. So I am looking forward to Unranked Draft just because that will allow me to play in an environment where mirrors can't happen. It will also allow me to play in a Kael-Free environment since he still a pile of hot bullshit.
But draft isn't perfect either, since you gotta be willing to fill various roles and you might not get exactly the guy you want to play. You also have to deal with people who are really bad at drafting and don't understand the game mechanics enough to know what is and isn't a good comp. Or people who refuse to play anything other than Illidan/Nova/Sylvanas/InsertPetCharacterHere no matter what.
Both have their positives, both have their negatives. I will continue to play both depending on my current goals.
And of course I'm also planning on playing Ranked and attempting to climb the ranked ladder.
I'm still really concerned about splitting the player base (re: unranked draft). I hope Blizzard knows what they're doing.
It's certainly a valid concern. Especially now that we live in a post-Overwatch world, where at any given time I have like 15 people on my friends list playing OW and zero to 1 playing Heroes.
Queue times in Heroes are worse than ever before. And if this patch doesn't pull a ton of people back, it's only going to get worse.
Huh. I got rewards as though I had been rank 22 in Hero League, but I'm pretty confident I never made it above rank 34. Maybe this means they did it based on MMR or something? It's pretty weird. I'm now unhappy I didn't somehow push a little further into pseudo-rank 19, for the mount.
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I'm still really concerned about splitting the player base (re: unranked draft). I hope Blizzard knows what they're doing.
It's certainly a valid concern. Especially now that we live in a post-Overwatch world, where at any given time I have like 15 people on my friends list playing OW and zero to 1 playing Heroes.
Queue times in Heroes are worse than ever before. And if this patch doesn't pull a ton of people back, it's only going to get worse.
My queue times have been quite short lately. Playerbase seems about the usual overall. It's only our HOTS channel and my friend's list that seems to have been decimated.
Splitting the playerbase this much, with Arena to come later this year, is still a stupid idea though imo.
Yeah, I definitely think Arena is a bad idea. For one thing, not every hero shines in a brawler style battle zone. And why would they want to reduce their hero pool? It seems like instead of giving more modes that exclude certain heroes from participating, they should work on giving us better maps for the primary game modes that fully support multiple playstyles and roster diversity.
Knocked out a couple Hero League placement games with @milk ducks this fine afternoon.
3-0 BOYS. Apparently I'm a good luck charm cause Ducks was reportedly 0-3 before that. :P
Some pretty fun games though. We won the drafts pretty hard each time I think. Game 1 they picked Thrall, I picked an early Xul to retaliate. Then they picked Illidan INTO my Xul (???). Game two was on BoE so we were like, let's get some good autoattackers. I get Thrall, Ducks gets Raynor. Enemy team last picks... Cho'gall?! Into OUR comp? With two Giant Killers??? We last picked Tyrande to really seal it out and punish him. Our ETC was a golden fucking god, had the most beautiful Mosh Pits I've ever seen.
Game 3 was a bit sketchy. The enemy team is lining up this rudenasty blow-up comp. Xul, Diablo, Falstad, Rehgar, Dehaka. Our comp so far is Li-Ming, Sonya, Tassadar, Jaina. I last pick Tyrael, because Sanc is LEGIT GOOD. And boy did it pay off. I used it offensively and defensively. We completely and utterly turned teamfights with it. I negated Apoc at least once, too. I kinda bungled a few others, but meh. Things were rough early game, but we turned it around hard mid/late. I only died once and I'm preeeeetty happy with that.
I'm still really concerned about splitting the player base (re: unranked draft). I hope Blizzard knows what they're doing.
It's certainly a valid concern. Especially now that we live in a post-Overwatch world, where at any given time I have like 15 people on my friends list playing OW and zero to 1 playing Heroes.
Queue times in Heroes are worse than ever before. And if this patch doesn't pull a ton of people back, it's only going to get worse.
My queue times have been quite short lately. Playerbase seems about the usual overall. It's only our HOTS channel and my friend's list that seems to have been decimated.
Splitting the playerbase this much, with Arena to come later this year, is still a stupid idea though imo.
Yeah, I definitely think Arena is a bad idea. For one thing, not every hero shines in a brawler style battle zone. And why would they want to reduce their hero pool? It seems like instead of giving more modes that exclude certain heroes from participating, they should work on giving us better maps for the primary game modes that fully support multiple playstyles and roster diversity.
Arena mode has reportedly changed to be more like a Tavern Brawl kinda deal (also similar to the Overwatch thingy, but I don't know anything about that):
Speaking of Blizzcon, this year's Blizzcon seems like it will be very polarized for either being extremely awesome with tons of new announcements, or really boring with no new announcements.
The Starcraft team is obviously working on something new since Void came out. But it's probably too soon to announce a new project for them.
WoW will have just launched Legion, which means they're only going to talk about Legion content patches and not anything new beyond that.
Diablo is who knows what. The season 6 patch was super weak and season 6 is the lamest season they have given us, which likely indicates they have pulled most of their resources off of the patch cycle and put them on something bigger, like either another expansion or a full blown sequel. But of course this is all speculation. We have no clue what the Diablo team is doing.
The Overwatch team just released that game, so I'm sure they'll have something about new maps or new heroes or new cosmetics. But I'm not expecting anything earth-shattering from them either.
So where does that leave us? There's not really anything new to talk about unless they have some unknown bombshell to drop.
I think this year's blizzcon will be heavy on Overwatch, Hearthstone, and Diablo 3 3. It'll be one of the low-key blizzcons. Like the ones where they just announce a WoW expansion. :bzz:
The problem with heroes is that it's a game that has a constant feed of new content throughout the year. Compare it to WoW or Overwatch which can get new expansions or big content patches as announcements and you can see why it's hard for heroes to have any really big ticket things to look forward to at Blizzcon since it's distributed throughout the year instead of every few months.
Oh, I had almost forgotten how toxic HL could be. I pick dead last almost every game (if not, I'm second-to-last), so that means I end up on Support or Warrior every time. This, despite the fact that I tell everyone immediately upon entering a lobby that Warrior is my least effective role. Like, last game? I end up on Anub'arak vs a very serious comp. At the end, my team calls me out for being shitty on him, and I'm like, "I literally told you its my least effective role -- you still forced me to take it."
Speaking of Blizzcon, this year's Blizzcon seems like it will be very polarized for either being extremely awesome with tons of new announcements, or really boring with no new announcements.
The Starcraft team is obviously working on something new since Void came out. But it's probably too soon to announce a new project for them.
WoW will have just launched Legion, which means they're only going to talk about Legion content patches and not anything new beyond that.
Diablo is who knows what. The season 6 patch was super weak and season 6 is the lamest season they have given us, which likely indicates they have pulled most of their resources off of the patch cycle and put them on something bigger, like either another expansion or a full blown sequel. But of course this is all speculation. We have no clue what the Diablo team is doing.
The Overwatch team just released that game, so I'm sure they'll have something about new maps or new heroes or new cosmetics. But I'm not expecting anything earth-shattering from them either.
So where does that leave us? There's not really anything new to talk about unless they have some unknown bombshell to drop.
I'm guessing the StarCraft team will announce more of these dlc mini stories like the Nova one currently ongoing.
I'll take all the Heroes news they'll give me though.
It feels increasingly like they only included Arena at Blizzcon because "new heroes" felt like too little for Blizzcon.
Yeah, the whole thing seemed like a bad idea from the start to me and the fact that it wasn't anywhere near ready to go and is now changing alot suggests to me it was REALLY early in development at the time and was pushed out so they had something to announce.
Overall, it still seems a bad idea to me because beyond just the issue of splitting the playerbase (already 4 freaking ways which is too many) it's a whole new design space that doesn't mesh with the rest of the game. Currently the only thing different between game modes is draft vs non-draft which isn't a huge issue for hero and map design and balance. But Arena is, like, way the fuck out there and is either gonna cause balance headaches and a further strain on design resources or it's gonna just be ignored in which case it's the bastard step-son of the game and that doesn't seem good.
They really should focus on the core experience of the game imo. Cause it's good. And vs AI and QM already exist to provide that crazy anything-goes instant-play accessibility.
+2
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The biggest way in which Medivh is a problem:
He's listed as a specialist but unlike basically every other specialist in the game, his damage seems very mediocre.
Just had a game that illustrated this issue.
Tyrael
ETC
Tyrande
Abathur
Medivh
We had like 2 kills the whole game. No damage at all.
Meanwhile they had:
Johanna
Muradin
Malfurion
Nazeebo
And a 5th I can't remember
Needless to say they had no issues pumping out the damage.
I really lost interest in the ranked system after one game was nothing but racist comments about 2 months ago
I just play vs the AI and do my daily and nothing else anymore since then
The mounts don't even tempt me to step back into it
Was telling @Dibby about one of my placement matches yesterday -- enemy team's drafted Valla, Raynor and Sonya, and I'm like, "Yo ban Morales, please. Any one of those guys with a stim drone is nasty, and we really don't have the comp to dive Morales". So, who does our Captain ban? Tassadar. Fucking Tassadar. Needless to say, they picked up Morales in the next phase and we lost the match pretty soundly. That shit's so irritating. I mean, don't get me wrong; I'm a huge fan of not ever giving up in Hots, but in this case, the match was pretty much over before it even began and you can place the blame squarely on that ban phase.
Also, I'll be damned if I can figure out how to construct a team around Medivh. We had someone first-pick him in unranked draft last night (and then later indicating he hadn't played him yet), and we just didn't know what to do. Do we draft a hybrid-support like Tyrande? Or do we need a full support? Either way, we're super short on damage. Again, we lost pretty soundly. What's the best way to go about utilizing a Medivh at this stage?
Based on the whopping two games I played with a medivh last night he seems like a superior tassadar. Maybe not quite as immortal but pretty close so I would guess dive centric heroes like illidan would like him.
Also of note the crow form to scout for hammer is really annoying
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So they touched on this a bit. With the new system, I believe the highest rank you can attain is Diamond X, where X is 5-1 or however that works.
You can't place into Master just from placement matches, I'm pretty sure. But you can get pretty close.
Start of every new Season will give you new placement matches. 10 this time, it's possible they'll adjust the number in the future. Like Pre-Season was 20 which was goddamn absurd.
Uncertainty will also be increased. This is, in short, the amount of MMR you gain or lose per game. So for example, I currently gain 10-12 MMR per game on average, right? Increased Uncertainty means that goes up to about 100 or so. In effect, this means you'll have a bit more control over where you land, and gives you a way to climb up if you're really stuck.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
As a QM diehard it is unfortunate. However given the buffs to anub'arak and arthas I at least will get to play them so it is sort of a wash.
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Nah. I'mma still play QM.
QM is great when I log in and go "I just want to play THIS Hero, straight up." QM is great when I just want to chill.
I'm gonna be playing both though, for sure.
Maybe even dabble in HL a bit too.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
It's around this time that my team - without fail - completely disperses in every direction, leaving me alone with my last drink before a five-man firing squad brings me the sweet release of death. I think I ended a game last night with 10 deaths. :?
Eh, if you're losing a fight and the tank sacrifices himself to save the other 4, it's actually not a bad trade. Certainly better than a wipe.
With Chen, what you want to do is unload all your abilities, then chug for the full time. Every single one of your cooldowns is 5 seconds. You can chug for 5 seconds. So kick, keg, fire, then chug until your kick is up again, and repeat. You turn into a big block of obnoxiousness in the middle of their formation that they can't easily kill/hurt, and that randomly dishes out damage. If you go earth/wind/fire for your ult, and take the upgrade at 20, you really start to dish out heavy damage using this strategy lategame. I've been over 80k damage with Chen using this plan before, and that was pre-damage boost.
Brewmaster's Balance is also an auto-pick at 7. The 20% move speed boost when you're below 50 brew is just too ridiculous to pass up. It's a pretty solid psuedo escape if you need it.
Battle.net: morgancoke#1589
Titan's Creed: Jump first, don't ask questions, punch everything
I personally get extremely irritated by mirror matches. The more mirrored heroes there are the more annoyed I get. So I am looking forward to Unranked Draft just because that will allow me to play in an environment where mirrors can't happen. It will also allow me to play in a Kael-Free environment since he still a pile of hot bullshit.
But draft isn't perfect either, since you gotta be willing to fill various roles and you might not get exactly the guy you want to play. You also have to deal with people who are really bad at drafting and don't understand the game mechanics enough to know what is and isn't a good comp. Or people who refuse to play anything other than Illidan/Nova/Sylvanas/InsertPetCharacterHere no matter what.
Both have their positives, both have their negatives. I will continue to play both depending on my current goals.
And of course I'm also planning on playing Ranked and attempting to climb the ranked ladder.
Welp, looks like Guldan is the next hero. That dude is on the money (again)
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Agreed, I'm glad those that wanted unranked have it, but I have this worry as well
It's certainly a valid concern. Especially now that we live in a post-Overwatch world, where at any given time I have like 15 people on my friends list playing OW and zero to 1 playing Heroes.
Queue times in Heroes are worse than ever before. And if this patch doesn't pull a ton of people back, it's only going to get worse.
But for some reason I'm excited for him in Heroes. Not too excited, mind you. But excited nonetheless.
I think it's just because he's an orc and I like orcs.
he saved her a few gold in repairing arrow divets at least
My queue times have been quite short lately. Playerbase seems about the usual overall. It's only our HOTS channel and my friend's list that seems to have been decimated.
Splitting the playerbase this much, with Arena to come later this year, is still a stupid idea though imo.
3-0 BOYS. Apparently I'm a good luck charm cause Ducks was reportedly 0-3 before that. :P
Some pretty fun games though. We won the drafts pretty hard each time I think. Game 1 they picked Thrall, I picked an early Xul to retaliate. Then they picked Illidan INTO my Xul (???). Game two was on BoE so we were like, let's get some good autoattackers. I get Thrall, Ducks gets Raynor. Enemy team last picks... Cho'gall?! Into OUR comp? With two Giant Killers??? We last picked Tyrande to really seal it out and punish him. Our ETC was a golden fucking god, had the most beautiful Mosh Pits I've ever seen.
Game 3 was a bit sketchy. The enemy team is lining up this rudenasty blow-up comp. Xul, Diablo, Falstad, Rehgar, Dehaka. Our comp so far is Li-Ming, Sonya, Tassadar, Jaina. I last pick Tyrael, because Sanc is LEGIT GOOD. And boy did it pay off. I used it offensively and defensively. We completely and utterly turned teamfights with it. I negated Apoc at least once, too. I kinda bungled a few others, but meh. Things were rough early game, but we turned it around hard mid/late. I only died once and I'm preeeeetty happy with that.
7 more placement games to go!
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
Arena mode has reportedly changed to be more like a Tavern Brawl kinda deal (also similar to the Overwatch thingy, but I don't know anything about that):
We don't really know much about Arena mode at all yet. There's still a lot of time before it comes out.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
Probably was too early though, yea.
The Starcraft team is obviously working on something new since Void came out. But it's probably too soon to announce a new project for them.
WoW will have just launched Legion, which means they're only going to talk about Legion content patches and not anything new beyond that.
Diablo is who knows what. The season 6 patch was super weak and season 6 is the lamest season they have given us, which likely indicates they have pulled most of their resources off of the patch cycle and put them on something bigger, like either another expansion or a full blown sequel. But of course this is all speculation. We have no clue what the Diablo team is doing.
The Overwatch team just released that game, so I'm sure they'll have something about new maps or new heroes or new cosmetics. But I'm not expecting anything earth-shattering from them either.
So where does that leave us? There's not really anything new to talk about unless they have some unknown bombshell to drop.
Well, RIP 2k+ games played, I guess.
you'll always have hotsdogs
edit: more seriously it's probably just because, you know, we're finally starting proper seasons, so it wiped preseason
I'm guessing the StarCraft team will announce more of these dlc mini stories like the Nova one currently ongoing.
I'll take all the Heroes news they'll give me though.
Yeah, the whole thing seemed like a bad idea from the start to me and the fact that it wasn't anywhere near ready to go and is now changing alot suggests to me it was REALLY early in development at the time and was pushed out so they had something to announce.
Overall, it still seems a bad idea to me because beyond just the issue of splitting the playerbase (already 4 freaking ways which is too many) it's a whole new design space that doesn't mesh with the rest of the game. Currently the only thing different between game modes is draft vs non-draft which isn't a huge issue for hero and map design and balance. But Arena is, like, way the fuck out there and is either gonna cause balance headaches and a further strain on design resources or it's gonna just be ignored in which case it's the bastard step-son of the game and that doesn't seem good.
They really should focus on the core experience of the game imo. Cause it's good. And vs AI and QM already exist to provide that crazy anything-goes instant-play accessibility.
He's listed as a specialist but unlike basically every other specialist in the game, his damage seems very mediocre.
Just had a game that illustrated this issue.
Tyrael
ETC
Tyrande
Abathur
Medivh
We had like 2 kills the whole game. No damage at all.
Meanwhile they had:
Johanna
Muradin
Malfurion
Nazeebo
And a 5th I can't remember
Needless to say they had no issues pumping out the damage.
I just play vs the AI and do my daily and nothing else anymore since then
The mounts don't even tempt me to step back into it
Also of note the crow form to scout for hammer is really annoying
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