Moving it around works with burst ability heroes, not with AA or other sustained damage types. It's also just kind of thematically weird that the angel of hope "bestows hope" on someone and it does nothing for them. I guess hope is overrated?
Your statements about the level 4 talents kinda prove my point, that her talents are a solid mix of bad, useless, and poorly designed.
The ult thing kinda also backs up my point, the upgrade isn't good for the way the talent is able to be used. If it also included a cast time reduction or something then yes, it would be good at that. But it doesn't.
I know they're not trying to consistently release bad heroes, but it is absolutely a choice on their part. Do they set the talents at a level they worry might be "pushed"? Or do they set the talents at a level they feel certain is "safe"? They're clearly picking the latter. And the fact that they still haven't fixed any of the other weak heroes they've released lately kinda shows that they're pretty ok with that state of things.
XBL: Morgan Coke Yes, there is a space, not an underscore. I'm old school like that.
Battle.net: morgancoke#1589
Moving it around works with burst ability heroes, not with AA or other sustained damage types. It's also just kind of thematically weird that the angel of hope "bestows hope" on someone and it does nothing for them. I guess hope is overrated?
Your statements about the level 4 talents kinda prove my point, that her talents are a solid mix of bad, useless, and poorly designed.
The ult thing kinda also backs up my point, the upgrade isn't good for the way the talent is able to be used. If it also included a cast time reduction or something then yes, it would be good at that. But it doesn't.
I know they're not trying to consistently release bad heroes, but it is absolutely a choice on their part. Do they set the talents at a level they worry might be "pushed"? Or do they set the talents at a level they feel certain is "safe"? They're clearly picking the latter. And the fact that they still haven't fixed any of the other weak heroes they've released lately kinda shows that they're pretty ok with that state of things.
XBL: Morgan Coke Yes, there is a space, not an underscore. I'm old school like that.
Battle.net: morgancoke#1589
*snip*
And they aren't trying to consistently release bad heroes. That's silly. But they are obviously having issues in internal testing.
It's a double problem. A) Internal Testing as you say and Not letting a patch sit long enough on the PTR or using feedback from people who play on the PTR.
One week of PTR time gives literally zero chance of software updates to address concerns brought up by the players on the PTR. The entire software process is a long one. Code written, code, validated by programmers, code sent to QA for internal testing, QA providing their feedback, possible internal bug fixes and iteration, more QA, and finally validation and release. And that process cannot happen in 1 week's time.
I don't know if I'd say "literally zero" chance, but I'm guessing they have to prioritize any issues that crop up during PTR testing. I'd assume bugs heavily out-prioritize hero performance numbers - like, "oh shit, we made X change and now Y hero can walk through enemy gates!" is more of a squeaky wheel than "Auriel builds hope a bit too slowly," or whatever.
And speaking of those performance numbers, the amount of people playing and contributing any meaningful information can be pretty low on the PTR. How does she perform in low tier HL? High tier? Are the early numbers due to a high/low skill floor/ceiling and the hero needs time to even out as people figure out how to more effectively play/counter them?
And it's not like they can fix this by putting heroes out, say, 3 weeks before release when we're on a 3-4 week rotation, because it would split the player base too much. That, and PTR numbers tend to die fairly quickly after only the first few days.
*snip*
And they aren't trying to consistently release bad heroes. That's silly. But they are obviously having issues in internal testing.
It's a double problem. A) Internal Testing as you say and Not letting a patch sit long enough on the PTR or using feedback from people who play on the PTR.
One week of PTR time gives literally zero chance of software updates to address concerns brought up by the players on the PTR. The entire software process is a long one. Code written, code, validated by programmers, code sent to QA for internal testing, QA providing their feedback, possible internal bug fixes and iteration, more QA, and finally validation and release. And that process cannot happen in 1 week's time.
didn't blizzard recently say that the PTR has nothnig to do with balance testing? it could just be speculation i saw, but the point is simply to see if there are game breaking bugs.
*snip*
And they aren't trying to consistently release bad heroes. That's silly. But they are obviously having issues in internal testing.
It's a double problem. A) Internal Testing as you say and Not letting a patch sit long enough on the PTR or using feedback from people who play on the PTR.
One week of PTR time gives literally zero chance of software updates to address concerns brought up by the players on the PTR. The entire software process is a long one. Code written, code, validated by programmers, code sent to QA for internal testing, QA providing their feedback, possible internal bug fixes and iteration, more QA, and finally validation and release. And that process cannot happen in 1 week's time.
The PTR is for bug testing, not balance testing. Which makes sense because the PTR is useless for balance testing. The environment tells you nothing about how a hero will actually perform in the real game. They ain't gonna learn anything from it beyond a few basics.
The problem is their internal testing is fucked up in some strange way. I wonder if they have major issues with having essentially an internal meta that is completely different from the actual live meta. It really seems like things don't go how they expect they will.
There's also, as mentioned before though, the issue that the data we see from HOTSlogs is not necessarily meaningful because of the interaction of difficulty and skill floor and the like. And the fact that, judging from what they've said occasionally of their internal numbers, it's not even all that close frequently.
0
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
*snip*
And they aren't trying to consistently release bad heroes. That's silly. But they are obviously having issues in internal testing.
It's a double problem. A) Internal Testing as you say and Not letting a patch sit long enough on the PTR or using feedback from people who play on the PTR.
One week of PTR time gives literally zero chance of software updates to address concerns brought up by the players on the PTR. The entire software process is a long one. Code written, code, validated by programmers, code sent to QA for internal testing, QA providing their feedback, possible internal bug fixes and iteration, more QA, and finally validation and release. And that process cannot happen in 1 week's time.
It's pretty clear they mainly use the PTR as a final check to identify any game-breaking bugs that didn't show up in internal testing. I'm guessing they get a ton of game data too, but likely only make very small tweaks based on very large skews from their internal testing, which honestly isn't a terrible approach given the alternatives. A longer PTR also faces its own challenges, because you risk constantly splintering the player base and also raising expectations for balance on the live game. It's a lot easier to simply say that the game is always in a state of flux, and while they do their best to balance it, there is no such thing as perfect balance (particularly on release), so spending more time in a separate environment is kind of wasted effort - what you care about is getting a good approximation while ensuring that the game itself actually works well.
Moving it around works with burst ability heroes, not with AA or other sustained damage types. It's also just kind of thematically weird that the angel of hope "bestows hope" on someone and it does nothing for them. I guess hope is overrated?
Your statements about the level 4 talents kinda prove my point, that her talents are a solid mix of bad, useless, and poorly designed.
The ult thing kinda also backs up my point, the upgrade isn't good for the way the talent is able to be used. If it also included a cast time reduction or something then yes, it would be good at that. But it doesn't.
Hopes becomes health. That's what the hero does.
And your statement about the lvl 4 talents doesn't make any sense. There are two good ones, one general, one more situational and only 1 that doesn't make sense. Really, I'd say your characterization of her talents in general is just ... weird. She has alot of good talents. It's not Kael level good, but it's solid enough and comparable to most heroes. Some decent choices at every level depending on what you want to do. The biggest issues, frankly, is her two damage increase talents at 16 feel really low impact imo.
The ult upgrade isn't a problem with the talent, it's a problem with the ult. The cast time is too long for this meta and so the skill is basically unusable in combat. They need to fix the ult so it fills it's intended role not fix the upgrade. Cause no matter what you do to the Res, it's still gonna be bad on it's own and it shouldn't be.
I know they're not trying to consistently release bad heroes, but it is absolutely a choice on their part. Do they set the talents at a level they worry might be "pushed"? Or do they set the talents at a level they feel certain is "safe"? They're clearly picking the latter. And the fact that they still haven't fixed any of the other weak heroes they've released lately kinda shows that they're pretty ok with that state of things.
Uh no, it's not about being "safe", it's about their internal testing having issues under and over valuing certain things to the point where characters don't really work the way they seem to think they should in the live environment.
And I don't know wtf you are talking about since they've worked really hard to fix all those other heroes you've already mentioned. Medivh got fixed at the first opportunity and has been basically rock solid since then, though still difficult to use well. Chromie got reworked a ton and is in a decent place now. Her remaining issues, like with Tracer, are fundamental design ones. And Gul'dan also got serious buffs at the first opportunity and is pretty decent now. They are very obviously trying to buff the weaker releases up.
+3
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I was in a viewer game on Kaeyoh's stream yesterday, and totally did a thing:
And I don't know wtf you are talking about since they've worked really hard to fix all those other heroes you've already mentioned. Medivh got fixed at the first opportunity and has been basically rock solid since then, though still difficult to use well. Chromie got reworked a ton and is in a decent place now. Her remaining issues, like with Tracer, are fundamental design ones. And Gul'dan also got serious buffs at the first opportunity and is pretty decent now. They are very obviously trying to buff the weaker releases up.
So they've very carefully and enthusiastically reworked, buffed, and bumped them all up to being four of the worst six heroes in the game?
XBL: Morgan Coke Yes, there is a space, not an underscore. I'm old school like that.
Battle.net: morgancoke#1589
And I don't know wtf you are talking about since they've worked really hard to fix all those other heroes you've already mentioned. Medivh got fixed at the first opportunity and has been basically rock solid since then, though still difficult to use well. Chromie got reworked a ton and is in a decent place now. Her remaining issues, like with Tracer, are fundamental design ones. And Gul'dan also got serious buffs at the first opportunity and is pretty decent now. They are very obviously trying to buff the weaker releases up.
So they've very carefully and enthusiastically reworked, buffed, and bumped them all up to being four of the worst six heroes in the game?
The fact that tehy've "very carefully and enthusiastically reworked, buffed, and bumped them all" indicates that your original assertion that they are "pretty ok with that state of things" is entirely wrong.
You are confusing attempting with succeeding here. They may not have succeeded in balancing some of these heroes but they are very clearly trying and are not ok with the state of the weak heroes at release.
+5
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
And I don't know wtf you are talking about since they've worked really hard to fix all those other heroes you've already mentioned. Medivh got fixed at the first opportunity and has been basically rock solid since then, though still difficult to use well. Chromie got reworked a ton and is in a decent place now. Her remaining issues, like with Tracer, are fundamental design ones. And Gul'dan also got serious buffs at the first opportunity and is pretty decent now. They are very obviously trying to buff the weaker releases up.
So they've very carefully and enthusiastically reworked, buffed, and bumped them all up to being four of the worst six heroes in the game?
The fact that tehy've "very carefully and enthusiastically reworked, buffed, and bumped them all" indicates that your original assertion that they are "pretty ok with that state of things" is entirely wrong.
You are confusing attempting with succeeding here. They may not have succeeded in balancing some of these heroes but they are very clearly trying and are not ok with the state of the weak heroes at release.
They're also not intentionally releasing "bad" new Heroes.
Like it's fucking hard to release a perfectly balanced Hero. Name me a Hero that came out and everyone was like "yeah hmm, they're in a good spot." Dehaka, probably.
It may be that they're aiming to have them not be OP, I mean, like maybe "intentionally" undershooting a bit. And I put that in quotes because again, they're not purposely trying to release them in a bad state, but I think they are purposely trying to avoid releasing them in an OP state.
It's a delicate balance. I don't like new Heroes being UP either way because it just feels bad. I've played 2 games as Chromie and 2 games as Gul'dan before I was like "nah". They're never going to please everyone but right now it looks like they're trying to please the camp that doesn't want OP new Heroes. Well congratulations, you got it. This is the world we live in now, with awful new Heroes being released. I honestly think it's much easier to bring an OP Hero down than to raise an UP Hero up. It's usually pretty apparent what makes an OP Hero, yknow, OP. It's a bit harder the other way around.
I also have to wonder, how much does this affect sales? Do these UP new Heroes not recieve a lot of purchases due to that fact? Do OP new Heroes recieve a ton of purchases? It would be interesting to find out. I mean, personally, back when Nova was OP as fuck, I bought her and played her to level 9 because of that fact. Probably wouldn't do so now. And also I haven't even touched Nova since then, anyway...
The idea that they are intentionally airing on the side of undershooting doesn't work for me anyway. The easiest example of why: Ess of Johan
This talent wasn't "airing on the side of OP". It's straight up "WTF is wrong with the Blizzard balance team? How was this not noticed?". And there's plenty more like this.
I think it's clear that it's less a problem with airing on the side of OP or UP and more a matter of something really weird going on with the internal QA meta.
Kharazim. He was pretty much perfect when he came out. Sure, the level 1 talent tier only had 1 good choice, but he wasn't broken or OP or UP. He was near perfect.
Most of the op tier heroes usually have had one really obvious fix to bring them back down to relative sanity. Kael is the special snowflake.
Of the last year:
Gul'dan: turrible
Medivh: turrible
Chromie: turrible
Tracer: op tier but obvious fixes were obvious
Dehaka: maybe on the weaker side of balanced, but i think he's fine
Xul: holy fucking jesus christ tier, this is maybe the least balanced hero they've released since Kael
Li-Ming: op tier but only very good once ess was obviously removed
Greymane: i actually don't remember how good greymane was on release, but I think he was fine?
Lunara: very bad on release, but just required some easy numbers fixes
Cho'gall: lel tier, dunno if this even counts
Artanis: slowly walk away from him and he died for free tier
Morales: i think she was fairly balanced
Misha: Horrible on release since you were forced to control her via awkwardly pointing rexxar at things, but since that fix has been a decent niche hero
Kharazim: very balanced, still fine with relatively small changes to fix his low rate talents
Leoric: All shall suffer tier. Was fine once they fixed his utterly ludicrous ability to cut 40 seconds off rez timer. Then they nerfed him later into uselessness but that's just Blizz being Blizz.
So, of the last 15 heroes, I'd say 4 released OP, none released just normally above average, 4 released balanced, 2 released below average, and 4 released nightmarish.
And I don't know wtf you are talking about since they've worked really hard to fix all those other heroes you've already mentioned. Medivh got fixed at the first opportunity and has been basically rock solid since then, though still difficult to use well. Chromie got reworked a ton and is in a decent place now. Her remaining issues, like with Tracer, are fundamental design ones. And Gul'dan also got serious buffs at the first opportunity and is pretty decent now. They are very obviously trying to buff the weaker releases up.
So they've very carefully and enthusiastically reworked, buffed, and bumped them all up to being four of the worst six heroes in the game?
Are Tracer, Chromie, and Medivh among the worst heroes in the game? Because they are all quite solid. If that's the bottom of the barrel, then I guess I'm pretty OK with hero balance :P
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Their current balance philosophy is also largely informed by the pre-ban, pre-Unranked design. It was a lot harder to mitigate the effects of release an OP hero like Li-Ming in both league and competitive play both because the hero pool was significantly smaller but also because you couldn't ban heroes outright - either you picked the good stuff first or you risked letting the other team get them. The backlash from that is probably causing them to be much more conservative in their releases since then.
But nowadays, if something is released and it's OP, in the absolute worst-case scenario it will just replace whatever the existing "OP" meta is in terms of being banned, and those other heroes will suddenly start slipping through drafts and seeing more actual play. They let Kael wallow in his OPness for months, and people just worked around it by insta-banning him every single game. Li-Ming likely would've seen a similar pattern if she were released with bans in place, too.
And QM will always see a metric shit-ton of mirror matches with any newly-released hero anyway, so there's no reason to care about whether or not they are OP in that context because they will show up in every single game anyway. Also, QM is now a shitshow in terms of balance, so who cares?
I think she had a stutterstep bug on release too, where if you tried to stutterstep her movement between attack animations she never got the brief speed boost in her gait movement animation, or something like that.
So they've very carefully and enthusiastically reworked, buffed, and bumped them all up to being four of the worst six heroes in the game?
Again, I think the win rates are lower for Chromie and Medivh because they're high skill ceiling heroes. I know that's the case for Abathur. I can't explain Gul'Dan's current low win rate since I didn't get the impression he was super high ceiling but any time I'm up against him he feels really strong, and he always does good damage.
But look, heroes bounce around. Sonya's back down at the bottom. She was up at the top after they buffed her a while back and then they nerfed her down to where she is. I'm sure she'll get a boost again some day.
guldan does chip damage and has 0 ability to finish people off. he's like zagara except with less utility less damage and less survibility
Yeah, I think Gul'dan has some good damage and amazing wave clear, but he's got too little mobility for how close he needs to get and stay to the enemy to get anything done. And his main survivability tool makes this even worse. That's why everyone goes Corruption build and why it's got the highest winrate. It's the only big bursty safe damage he has.
He's not trash tier, as his winrate shows he's still withing the 45-55 range, but he's got issues.
Oops. Super important fight at level 20+, team (without me, support) gets ambushed, so I run to get there asap. I'm watching the fight, hoping I get there soon, but one by one my team dies .
Then I notice that I am in the middle of the fight not doing anything, just as I die.
I have no idea how long I was there. I maybe could have turned that whole thing around.
more important question: why do you still have camera lock on
like the only time it's an improvement is gall
Because I get disoriented when I'm not in the centre of the screen most of the time. The latest patch may have fixed this some by making my health bar a different colour. I haven't tried.
Because I get disoriented when I'm not in the centre of the screen most of the time. The latest patch may have fixed this some by making my health bar a different colour. I haven't tried.
You should try. And remember that you can always hold down space to turn on camera lock when you need it. This way you can ween yourself off of it.
more important question: why do you still have camera lock on
like the only time it's an improvement is gall
When I started I had a LOT of trouble keeping track of my hero in scrums and in groups, I found that Camera Lock helped me to to do that. I'll try playing again with it off, maybe it won't be an issue for me anymore.
XBL: Morgan Coke Yes, there is a space, not an underscore. I'm old school like that.
Battle.net: morgancoke#1589
So I finally got to play yesterday after it took 30 mins for my patches to d/l (HS and heroes).
Not sure if it was my connection but the launcher would stay in "initializing" each patch for a good 5 minutes before showing anything. It likely was already downloading but geez.
Anyway, my game was lagging bad. Way worse than usual. Any team fight and I'd be a power point.
This happened with pretty much every game. It had never been this bad before and the computer was from a fresh reboot.
I was hoping to have better than normal performance with the patch notes that frame rates were improved for all modes but nope. Everything was very, bad... even in AI games.
Posts
Your statements about the level 4 talents kinda prove my point, that her talents are a solid mix of bad, useless, and poorly designed.
The ult thing kinda also backs up my point, the upgrade isn't good for the way the talent is able to be used. If it also included a cast time reduction or something then yes, it would be good at that. But it doesn't.
I know they're not trying to consistently release bad heroes, but it is absolutely a choice on their part. Do they set the talents at a level they worry might be "pushed"? Or do they set the talents at a level they feel certain is "safe"? They're clearly picking the latter. And the fact that they still haven't fixed any of the other weak heroes they've released lately kinda shows that they're pretty ok with that state of things.
Battle.net: morgancoke#1589
Titan's Creed: Jump first, don't ask questions, punch everything
Your statements about the level 4 talents kinda prove my point, that her talents are a solid mix of bad, useless, and poorly designed.
The ult thing kinda also backs up my point, the upgrade isn't good for the way the talent is able to be used. If it also included a cast time reduction or something then yes, it would be good at that. But it doesn't.
I know they're not trying to consistently release bad heroes, but it is absolutely a choice on their part. Do they set the talents at a level they worry might be "pushed"? Or do they set the talents at a level they feel certain is "safe"? They're clearly picking the latter. And the fact that they still haven't fixed any of the other weak heroes they've released lately kinda shows that they're pretty ok with that state of things.
Battle.net: morgancoke#1589
Titan's Creed: Jump first, don't ask questions, punch everything
It's a double problem. A) Internal Testing as you say and
One week of PTR time gives literally zero chance of software updates to address concerns brought up by the players on the PTR. The entire software process is a long one. Code written, code, validated by programmers, code sent to QA for internal testing, QA providing their feedback, possible internal bug fixes and iteration, more QA, and finally validation and release. And that process cannot happen in 1 week's time.
Auriel is definitely a great secondary support, if nothing else.
And after some games with Diablos and Chens and what I've heard about Cho'gall, she LOVES her some beefy tanks to play with.
And speaking of those performance numbers, the amount of people playing and contributing any meaningful information can be pretty low on the PTR. How does she perform in low tier HL? High tier? Are the early numbers due to a high/low skill floor/ceiling and the hero needs time to even out as people figure out how to more effectively play/counter them?
And it's not like they can fix this by putting heroes out, say, 3 weeks before release when we're on a 3-4 week rotation, because it would split the player base too much. That, and PTR numbers tend to die fairly quickly after only the first few days.
XBL: InvaderJims
Bnet: Pudgestomp#11153
didn't blizzard recently say that the PTR has nothnig to do with balance testing? it could just be speculation i saw, but the point is simply to see if there are game breaking bugs.
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website
The PTR is for bug testing, not balance testing. Which makes sense because the PTR is useless for balance testing. The environment tells you nothing about how a hero will actually perform in the real game. They ain't gonna learn anything from it beyond a few basics.
The problem is their internal testing is fucked up in some strange way. I wonder if they have major issues with having essentially an internal meta that is completely different from the actual live meta. It really seems like things don't go how they expect they will.
There's also, as mentioned before though, the issue that the data we see from HOTSlogs is not necessarily meaningful because of the interaction of difficulty and skill floor and the like. And the fact that, judging from what they've said occasionally of their internal numbers, it's not even all that close frequently.
It's pretty clear they mainly use the PTR as a final check to identify any game-breaking bugs that didn't show up in internal testing. I'm guessing they get a ton of game data too, but likely only make very small tweaks based on very large skews from their internal testing, which honestly isn't a terrible approach given the alternatives. A longer PTR also faces its own challenges, because you risk constantly splintering the player base and also raising expectations for balance on the live game. It's a lot easier to simply say that the game is always in a state of flux, and while they do their best to balance it, there is no such thing as perfect balance (particularly on release), so spending more time in a separate environment is kind of wasted effort - what you care about is getting a good approximation while ensuring that the game itself actually works well.
Hopes becomes health. That's what the hero does.
And your statement about the lvl 4 talents doesn't make any sense. There are two good ones, one general, one more situational and only 1 that doesn't make sense. Really, I'd say your characterization of her talents in general is just ... weird. She has alot of good talents. It's not Kael level good, but it's solid enough and comparable to most heroes. Some decent choices at every level depending on what you want to do. The biggest issues, frankly, is her two damage increase talents at 16 feel really low impact imo.
The ult upgrade isn't a problem with the talent, it's a problem with the ult. The cast time is too long for this meta and so the skill is basically unusable in combat. They need to fix the ult so it fills it's intended role not fix the upgrade. Cause no matter what you do to the Res, it's still gonna be bad on it's own and it shouldn't be.
Uh no, it's not about being "safe", it's about their internal testing having issues under and over valuing certain things to the point where characters don't really work the way they seem to think they should in the live environment.
And I don't know wtf you are talking about since they've worked really hard to fix all those other heroes you've already mentioned. Medivh got fixed at the first opportunity and has been basically rock solid since then, though still difficult to use well. Chromie got reworked a ton and is in a decent place now. Her remaining issues, like with Tracer, are fundamental design ones. And Gul'dan also got serious buffs at the first opportunity and is pretty decent now. They are very obviously trying to buff the weaker releases up.
https://www.twitch.tv/kaeyoh/v/82671780?t=07h41m16s
Shit dude I was watching that live
Well not THAT game, the Li Li game
but that was kinda cool I GUESS
edit: NO BUT WAIT YOU LOST THE GAME, YOU SUCK
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
So they've very carefully and enthusiastically reworked, buffed, and bumped them all up to being four of the worst six heroes in the game?
Battle.net: morgancoke#1589
Titan's Creed: Jump first, don't ask questions, punch everything
The fact that tehy've "very carefully and enthusiastically reworked, buffed, and bumped them all" indicates that your original assertion that they are "pretty ok with that state of things" is entirely wrong.
You are confusing attempting with succeeding here. They may not have succeeded in balancing some of these heroes but they are very clearly trying and are not ok with the state of the weak heroes at release.
I blame Auriel for that loss.
>.>
<.<
But we won the next one!
They're also not intentionally releasing "bad" new Heroes.
Like it's fucking hard to release a perfectly balanced Hero. Name me a Hero that came out and everyone was like "yeah hmm, they're in a good spot." Dehaka, probably.
It may be that they're aiming to have them not be OP, I mean, like maybe "intentionally" undershooting a bit. And I put that in quotes because again, they're not purposely trying to release them in a bad state, but I think they are purposely trying to avoid releasing them in an OP state.
It's a delicate balance. I don't like new Heroes being UP either way because it just feels bad. I've played 2 games as Chromie and 2 games as Gul'dan before I was like "nah". They're never going to please everyone but right now it looks like they're trying to please the camp that doesn't want OP new Heroes. Well congratulations, you got it. This is the world we live in now, with awful new Heroes being released. I honestly think it's much easier to bring an OP Hero down than to raise an UP Hero up. It's usually pretty apparent what makes an OP Hero, yknow, OP. It's a bit harder the other way around.
I also have to wonder, how much does this affect sales? Do these UP new Heroes not recieve a lot of purchases due to that fact? Do OP new Heroes recieve a ton of purchases? It would be interesting to find out. I mean, personally, back when Nova was OP as fuck, I bought her and played her to level 9 because of that fact. Probably wouldn't do so now. And also I haven't even touched Nova since then, anyway...
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
This talent wasn't "airing on the side of OP". It's straight up "WTF is wrong with the Blizzard balance team? How was this not noticed?". And there's plenty more like this.
I think it's clear that it's less a problem with airing on the side of OP or UP and more a matter of something really weird going on with the internal QA meta.
Of the last year:
Gul'dan: turrible
Medivh: turrible
Chromie: turrible
Tracer: op tier but obvious fixes were obvious
Dehaka: maybe on the weaker side of balanced, but i think he's fine
Xul: holy fucking jesus christ tier, this is maybe the least balanced hero they've released since Kael
Li-Ming: op tier but only very good once ess was obviously removed
Greymane: i actually don't remember how good greymane was on release, but I think he was fine?
Lunara: very bad on release, but just required some easy numbers fixes
Cho'gall: lel tier, dunno if this even counts
Artanis: slowly walk away from him and he died for free tier
Morales: i think she was fairly balanced
Misha: Horrible on release since you were forced to control her via awkwardly pointing rexxar at things, but since that fix has been a decent niche hero
Kharazim: very balanced, still fine with relatively small changes to fix his low rate talents
Leoric: All shall suffer tier. Was fine once they fixed his utterly ludicrous ability to cut 40 seconds off rez timer. Then they nerfed him later into uselessness but that's just Blizz being Blizz.
So, of the last 15 heroes, I'd say 4 released OP, none released just normally above average, 4 released balanced, 2 released below average, and 4 released nightmarish.
and cho'gall is cho'gall.
Are Tracer, Chromie, and Medivh among the worst heroes in the game? Because they are all quite solid. If that's the bottom of the barrel, then I guess I'm pretty OK with hero balance :P
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
But nowadays, if something is released and it's OP, in the absolute worst-case scenario it will just replace whatever the existing "OP" meta is in terms of being banned, and those other heroes will suddenly start slipping through drafts and seeing more actual play. They let Kael wallow in his OPness for months, and people just worked around it by insta-banning him every single game. Li-Ming likely would've seen a similar pattern if she were released with bans in place, too.
And QM will always see a metric shit-ton of mirror matches with any newly-released hero anyway, so there's no reason to care about whether or not they are OP in that context because they will show up in every single game anyway. Also, QM is now a shitshow in terms of balance, so who cares?
Gotta love those "quality of life" buffs.
I can't imagine what it was like before, because right now I play her and it still feels super janky to me...
if you attacked someone in melee range the autoattack animation was 300% slower
edit: also I think the ranged one was bumped to be like 50% faster
Battle.net: morgancoke#1589
Titan's Creed: Jump first, don't ask questions, punch everything
Spacebar
like the only time it's an improvement is gall
Again, I think the win rates are lower for Chromie and Medivh because they're high skill ceiling heroes. I know that's the case for Abathur. I can't explain Gul'Dan's current low win rate since I didn't get the impression he was super high ceiling but any time I'm up against him he feels really strong, and he always does good damage.
But look, heroes bounce around. Sonya's back down at the bottom. She was up at the top after they buffed her a while back and then they nerfed her down to where she is. I'm sure she'll get a boost again some day.
Switch: 6589-6405-3399
Yeah, I think Gul'dan has some good damage and amazing wave clear, but he's got too little mobility for how close he needs to get and stay to the enemy to get anything done. And his main survivability tool makes this even worse. That's why everyone goes Corruption build and why it's got the highest winrate. It's the only big bursty safe damage he has.
He's not trash tier, as his winrate shows he's still withing the 45-55 range, but he's got issues.
Then I notice that I am in the middle of the fight not doing anything, just as I die.
I have no idea how long I was there. I maybe could have turned that whole thing around.
Oops...
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
Because I get disoriented when I'm not in the centre of the screen most of the time. The latest patch may have fixed this some by making my health bar a different colour. I haven't tried.
Steam: TimIsOnSteam
Battle.net: TimIsOnBnet#1745
Switch: SW-7012-4788-7410
PSN: TimIsOnTheNet
I could never play with it on. Too much going on not to be able to move the acreen around a bit. Specially helpful for ambushes and stuff.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
You should try. And remember that you can always hold down space to turn on camera lock when you need it. This way you can ween yourself off of it.
Switch: 6589-6405-3399
When I started I had a LOT of trouble keeping track of my hero in scrums and in groups, I found that Camera Lock helped me to to do that. I'll try playing again with it off, maybe it won't be an issue for me anymore.
Battle.net: morgancoke#1589
Titan's Creed: Jump first, don't ask questions, punch everything
Not sure if it was my connection but the launcher would stay in "initializing" each patch for a good 5 minutes before showing anything. It likely was already downloading but geez.
Anyway, my game was lagging bad. Way worse than usual. Any team fight and I'd be a power point.
This happened with pretty much every game. It had never been this bad before and the computer was from a fresh reboot.
I was hoping to have better than normal performance with the patch notes that frame rates were improved for all modes but nope. Everything was very, bad... even in AI games.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra