But I'm obviously very terrible at this game since I cannot even claw my way out of the dregs of silver 3. And coming face to face with my own awfulness is unpleasant. It sucks being excluded from game content because I'm bad.
You're not terrible at Hots. I've always enjoyed playing with you. I think you have things to work on, just like everyone else does. I also think it has been a serious drag that this season drove you (and others) away, because we are mostly doing solo- and duo-queues now, and that can get tedious at times. I know that I've been away from Hots more than I'd like this season, just because nobody is ever on.
Re: gul'dan health funnel. I still think it is unnecessary vs zag since you lose improved life tap which will be a problem later on when laning becomes less important. Without health funnel you can still win the lane relatively easily
I thought it was mostly just other games coming along--overwatch, legion, karazahn, or in my case no man's sky.
That's what I had assumed as well. It is sort of a self feeding cycle since ethereal are less people on, others don't try to be one as much, leading to less people on etc. Personally I still want to play but usually my entire friends list is WoW or some other game at the moment so I go play blood bowl, or duelyst or whatever.
I will be on tomorrow for some games. Hopefully they do a reduced map rotation like they've done in days past so that the Braxis Holdout map has a much higher chance of rotating.
I'm quite far behind on leveling heroes, so I'll be playing Auriel or Gul'dan if any of you folks wanna grab some games. I'm gonna buy the bundle that includes Alarak, but I don't plan on immediately playing him so I won't be competition for any of y'all who are wanting to try him out.
I rarely see the common folk from yore on these days.
There's a couple of constants but they're usually already grouped and in game.
The wangs channel is ever so silent.
I'm on most nights but not till after like 11pm EST and most people appear to have already gone to bed by then. When I do get a group people are off to bed after like a game or two.
They recently lowered the GM pool by a couple hundred spots.
I wonder if that was to reflect the current player pool? Kinda sucks =(
Nah, it's just them trying to make the GM title mean something. I mean, yes it's reflective of the size of the player pool, but it's not about a change in the size of the player pool.
I rarely see the common folk from yore on these days.
There's a couple of constants but they're usually already grouped and in game.
The wangs channel is ever so silent.
Yeah same, at peak hours there's usually 3-5 people on tops between the wangs channel and my friends list (and I don't have a lot of friends not in that channel). This game borders on unplayable for me without at least one person grouped, mainly because I'm very intolerant people who have no clue about the mechanics of this game or are verbally abusive (which often overlap). If you're just not that good, eh whatever I'm not a superstar either.
0
No-QuarterNothing To FearBut Fear ItselfRegistered Userregular
I stopped playing for awhile simply because of how poorly ranked is conceived/ graded.
Yeah I don't like watching my rank go down in addition to having 20+ minutes of my life wasted, because even one person on my team was either an asshat, didn't know how to play, or both.
It was simply not worth it and I was really looking forward to a competitive experience akin to ranked in SC2.
I just play QM and don't really worry about mmr or ranking. Similar to hearthstone where I find casual mode more fun, I don't really need that rank up progress to feel good about the game. If I win, I enjoy it a lot, if I lose, I hope I at least had some sweet plays, and then I move on.
Leveling up the heroes and getting master skins is a nice diversion too. I do it way slower than some people here seem to (have 3 level 10s and 2 master skins - don't like thralls master skin), and it takes the place of any longer term goals. Mounts don't really motivate me either since I think most look super goofy.
I just hate drafting and love that QM exists. Once league of legends turned off dominion, with its relative freedom of hero choice and surplus of team fighting, I lost any desire to go back. HOTS has been great to fill that void.
But I'm obviously very terrible at this game since I cannot even claw my way out of the dregs of silver 3. And coming face to face with my own awfulness is unpleasant. It sucks being excluded from game content because I'm bad.
You're not terrible at Hots. I've always enjoyed playing with you. I think you have things to work on, just like everyone else does. I also think it has been a serious drag that this season drove you (and others) away, because we are mostly doing solo- and duo-queues now, and that can get tedious at times. I know that I've been away from Hots more than I'd like this season, just because nobody is ever on.
I blame Legion for my absence.
+3
No-QuarterNothing To FearBut Fear ItselfRegistered Userregular
I just play QM and don't really worry about mmr or ranking. Similar to hearthstone where I find casual mode more fun, I don't really need that rank up progress to feel good about the game. If I win, I enjoy it a lot, if I lose, I hope I at least had some sweet plays, and then I move on.
Leveling up the heroes and getting master skins is a nice diversion too. I do it way slower than some people here seem to (have 3 level 10s and 2 master skins - don't like thralls master skin), and it takes the place of any longer term goals. Mounts don't really motivate me either since I think most look super goofy.
I just hate drafting and love that QM exists. Once league of legends turned off dominion, with its relative freedom of hero choice and surplus of team fighting, I lost any desire to go back. HOTS has been great to fill that void.
I enjoy draft, actually. I just want a higher bar of companions to play with. I'd like to know how good of a player I actually am, but the matchmaker (in theory the game itself) doesn't allow for that.
Not every game is terrible, but the bad ones feel like a punch to the gut. Hell, every time I'm in a game and we start losing there's that moment where I'm just waiting for someone to go toxic.
I just play QM and don't really worry about mmr or ranking. Similar to hearthstone where I find casual mode more fun, I don't really need that rank up progress to feel good about the game. If I win, I enjoy it a lot, if I lose, I hope I at least had some sweet plays, and then I move on.
Leveling up the heroes and getting master skins is a nice diversion too. I do it way slower than some people here seem to (have 3 level 10s and 2 master skins - don't like thralls master skin), and it takes the place of any longer term goals. Mounts don't really motivate me either since I think most look super goofy.
I just hate drafting and love that QM exists. Once league of legends turned off dominion, with its relative freedom of hero choice and surplus of team fighting, I lost any desire to go back. HOTS has been great to fill that void.
I enjoy draft, actually. I just want a higher bar of companions to play with. I'd like to know how good of a player I actually am, but the matchmaker (in theory the game itself) doesn't allow for that.
Not every game is terrible, but the bad ones feel like a punch to the gut. Hell, every time I'm in a game and we start losing there's that moment where I'm just waiting for someone to go toxic.
I'm not really sure what you mean by the bolded section. Is it because this is a team game and not solo like SC2?
I wish I could have good QM games! I lost 2 HL games last night but they were both good games. One of them was actually super close. BoA and we were struggling for the first half but clawing our way back despite missing 1 keep, we won the immortal fight and then the other team just rushed our cor and we almost wiped them but we lost. I blame myself for that one, actually. I was playing Hammer and I knew they were rushing core so instead of hearthing I zoomed back, got caught by Kerrigan between that center door where the well is and our core, and died. If I had been alive for that fight we would have won.
He seems like he'll be pretty good. Good use of his W will make or break the character. He's definitely a character who scales with skill. He will be average to an average user and amazing in the hands of a highly skilled player.
He seems like he'll be pretty good. Good use of his W will make or break the character. He's definitely a character who scales with skill. He will be average to an average user and amazing in the hands of a highly skilled player.
I've enjoyed him on the PTR quite a bit.
Here's a tip for using his W as an escape, alt+w will propel you in the direction you are moving without needing to draw the line.
+3
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I still feel like the best way to approach HL is to treat it as a subset of Unranked where you only play your strongest, in-meta heroes, and you're doing your best to win. That's really it. Everything else is just a number.
Otherwise you can still just spam Unranked Draft if you want a competitive game with somewhat-decent comps, and then QM is for when you want to play a specific hero and just let the chips fall where they may.
Competition anxiety is a real thing, and it's OK to acknowledge it and manage it accordingly, rather than just avoiding it entirely.
I stopped playing for awhile simply because of how poorly ranked is conceived/ graded.
Yeah I don't like watching my rank go down in addition to having 20+ minutes of my life wasted, because even one person on my team was either an asshat, didn't know how to play, or both.
It was simply not worth it and I was really looking forward to a competitive experience akin to ranked in SC2.
Well, I mean, it sucks and it's one of the reasons I don't like HL but that's not really a result of the rank system being poor, it's a result of a rank system. You lose, you go down in the rankings. It's like, the very core of a rank system.
I still feel like the best way to approach HL is to treat it as a subset of Unranked where you only play your strongest, in-meta heroes, and you're doing your best to win. That's really it. Everything else is just a number.
Otherwise you can still just spam Unranked Draft if you want a competitive game with somewhat-decent comps, and then QM is for when you want to play a specific hero and just let the chips fall where they may.
Competition anxiety is a real thing, and it's OK to acknowledge it and manage it accordingly, rather than just avoiding it entirely.
For me it isn't competition anxiety. It's the inability to earn the rewards that I want that has caused serious burnout and fatigue. They give me a goal, and I am unable to achieve that goal, and it makes me hate playing.
He's a bit like if Kerrigan and Thrall had a weird mutant baby.
He's got a Kerrigan-esque combo where you push people into you with W, then Silence them with Q, then pop E. He lacks the engage potential of Kerrigan, I mean (Kerri can just jump right up to someone), but his Telekinesis -> Discord Strike combo is almost the same as Kerrigan's Impaling Blades -> Primal Grasp combo. Just with a Silence instead of a Stun.
And then of course he's a bit like Thrall cause he's got a lot of high bursty damage if he gets on you, and he's got an incredible poke tool with his E. He can very easily poke people out of lane early game just with his E. 6 second cooldown point-and-click ability.
His Ults... I'm not sure what to make of them yet. They seem okay. You can grab the other one at 20, so you're basically just taking what you need at that moment in time. Counter Strike is good for negating incoming damage (never EVER pop it pre-emptively, wait til you're being focused), but you CAN be stunned out of it. Deadly Charge is good for chasing and repositioning, and it's a pseudo escape. Guarantee you that you're gonna see Day 1 Alaraks popping Deadly Charge into the entire enemy team and die horrifically.
People have been experimenting with various different builds, and different levels of Sadism. Seems like you really don't want to go below 70% Sadism, cause that's when your damage starts to take a hard dip.
Just from watching him on the PTR he seems strong, but I'm not sure if he's actually good or just PTR good. We'll see.
One thing about these ranks is that when I played BW and SC2, I was pretty good.
I wasn't amazing (GM) but I was pretty much always diamond rank, even at the height of SC2's hype and player pool, I was always diamond. I squeezed in a Master's a couple of times.
Even if I didn't hit diamond in some seasons and just managed to get platinum because of time to play, it was OK. I never played the meta builds (always be proxing) and those were still good ranks.
In this game, it feels like I have such little control due to pubs that the ranking system is that much less forgiving.
So, it deters me from playing ranked, on top of all the other stuff.
I know they are different games and different styles, but the APM and reaction time are kind of still there.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
+2
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I still feel like the best way to approach HL is to treat it as a subset of Unranked where you only play your strongest, in-meta heroes, and you're doing your best to win. That's really it. Everything else is just a number.
Otherwise you can still just spam Unranked Draft if you want a competitive game with somewhat-decent comps, and then QM is for when you want to play a specific hero and just let the chips fall where they may.
Competition anxiety is a real thing, and it's OK to acknowledge it and manage it accordingly, rather than just avoiding it entirely.
For me it isn't competition anxiety. It's the inability to earn the rewards that I want that has caused serious burnout and fatigue. They give me a goal, and I am unable to achieve that goal, and it makes me hate playing.
FWIW I think you could hit Plat if you focused on it. I'm Gold 2, so I think if I bothered to play more games during the season I likely would've gotten the mount reward, and I think we're pretty comparable in skill when it comes to our strongest heroes.
0
No-QuarterNothing To FearBut Fear ItselfRegistered Userregular
I just play QM and don't really worry about mmr or ranking. Similar to hearthstone where I find casual mode more fun, I don't really need that rank up progress to feel good about the game. If I win, I enjoy it a lot, if I lose, I hope I at least had some sweet plays, and then I move on.
Leveling up the heroes and getting master skins is a nice diversion too. I do it way slower than some people here seem to (have 3 level 10s and 2 master skins - don't like thralls master skin), and it takes the place of any longer term goals. Mounts don't really motivate me either since I think most look super goofy.
I just hate drafting and love that QM exists. Once league of legends turned off dominion, with its relative freedom of hero choice and surplus of team fighting, I lost any desire to go back. HOTS has been great to fill that void.
I enjoy draft, actually. I just want a higher bar of companions to play with. I'd like to know how good of a player I actually am, but the matchmaker (in theory the game itself) doesn't allow for that.
Not every game is terrible, but the bad ones feel like a punch to the gut. Hell, every time I'm in a game and we start losing there's that moment where I'm just waiting for someone to go toxic.
I'm not really sure what you mean by the bolded section. Is it because this is a team game and not solo like SC2?
I stopped playing for awhile simply because of how poorly ranked is conceived/ graded.
Yeah I don't like watching my rank go down in addition to having 20+ minutes of my life wasted, because even one person on my team was either an asshat, didn't know how to play, or both.
It was simply not worth it and I was really looking forward to a competitive experience akin to ranked in SC2.
Well, I mean, it sucks and it's one of the reasons I don't like HL but that's not really a result of the rank system being poor, it's a result of a rank system. You lose, you go down in the rankings. It's like, the very core of a rank system.
Yes to both of these, I should have been more clear.
Part of it is that by nature of being a team-based game, any win/ lose system of ranking is going to be boinked due to the random nature of teammates.
And then there is the fact that as shyrke said, the ranking system is based entirely off of win/ loss which is the worst possible metric by which to judge player competence and skill.
What metrics do LoL and DotA? Is it win/loss or skill-based?
I just play QM and don't really worry about mmr or ranking. Similar to hearthstone where I find casual mode more fun, I don't really need that rank up progress to feel good about the game. If I win, I enjoy it a lot, if I lose, I hope I at least had some sweet plays, and then I move on.
Leveling up the heroes and getting master skins is a nice diversion too. I do it way slower than some people here seem to (have 3 level 10s and 2 master skins - don't like thralls master skin), and it takes the place of any longer term goals. Mounts don't really motivate me either since I think most look super goofy.
I just hate drafting and love that QM exists. Once league of legends turned off dominion, with its relative freedom of hero choice and surplus of team fighting, I lost any desire to go back. HOTS has been great to fill that void.
I enjoy draft, actually. I just want a higher bar of companions to play with. I'd like to know how good of a player I actually am, but the matchmaker (in theory the game itself) doesn't allow for that.
Not every game is terrible, but the bad ones feel like a punch to the gut. Hell, every time I'm in a game and we start losing there's that moment where I'm just waiting for someone to go toxic.
I'm not really sure what you mean by the bolded section. Is it because this is a team game and not solo like SC2?
I stopped playing for awhile simply because of how poorly ranked is conceived/ graded.
Yeah I don't like watching my rank go down in addition to having 20+ minutes of my life wasted, because even one person on my team was either an asshat, didn't know how to play, or both.
It was simply not worth it and I was really looking forward to a competitive experience akin to ranked in SC2.
Well, I mean, it sucks and it's one of the reasons I don't like HL but that's not really a result of the rank system being poor, it's a result of a rank system. You lose, you go down in the rankings. It's like, the very core of a rank system.
Yes to both of these, I should have been more clear.
Part of it is that by nature of being a team-based game, any win/ lose system of ranking is going to be boinked due to the random nature of teammates.
And then there is the fact that as shyrke said, the ranking system is based entirely off of win/ loss which is the worst possible metric by which to judge player competence and skill.
What metrics do LoL and DotA? Is it win/loss or skill-based?
e-for clarity
Win/Loss afaik.
And yeah, I hate the rewards being tied to ranks. I really want those epic-level mounts.
At least I managed to get in 10 random TL games to secure the normal mount, so my placements were less stressful.
I still feel like the best way to approach HL is to treat it as a subset of Unranked where you only play your strongest, in-meta heroes, and you're doing your best to win. That's really it. Everything else is just a number.
Otherwise you can still just spam Unranked Draft if you want a competitive game with somewhat-decent comps, and then QM is for when you want to play a specific hero and just let the chips fall where they may.
Competition anxiety is a real thing, and it's OK to acknowledge it and manage it accordingly, rather than just avoiding it entirely.
For me it isn't competition anxiety. It's the inability to earn the rewards that I want that has caused serious burnout and fatigue. They give me a goal, and I am unable to achieve that goal, and it makes me hate playing.
FWIW I think you could hit Plat if you focused on it. I'm Gold 2, so I think if I bothered to play more games during the season I likely would've gotten the mount reward, and I think we're pretty comparable in skill when it comes to our strongest heroes.
Yeah, I would agree with that. But the difference is, my best heroes are healers, and it's very hard to carry a team as a healer.
I have started trying to play more Thrall in my HL games because with him being a front-liner, plus having such a strong initiation tool in Sunder, you can pull the rest of your team along with you on engagements. But when Thrall isn't available to me I'm kind of screwed.
He's a bit like if Kerrigan and Thrall had a weird mutant baby.
He's got a Kerrigan-esque combo where you push people into you with W, then Silence them with Q, then pop E. He lacks the engage potential of Kerrigan, I mean (Kerri can just jump right up to someone), but his Telekinesis -> Discord Strike combo is almost the same as Kerrigan's Impaling Blades -> Primal Grasp combo. Just with a Silence instead of a Stun.
And then of course he's a bit like Thrall cause he's got a lot of high bursty damage if he gets on you, and he's got an incredible poke tool with his E. He can very easily poke people out of lane early game just with his E. 6 second cooldown point-and-click ability.
His Ults... I'm not sure what to make of them yet. They seem okay. You can grab the other one at 20, so you're basically just taking what you need at that moment in time. Counter Strike is good for negating incoming damage (never EVER pop it pre-emptively, wait til you're being focused), but you CAN be stunned out of it. Deadly Charge is good for chasing and repositioning, and it's a pseudo escape. Guarantee you that you're gonna see Day 1 Alaraks popping Deadly Charge into the entire enemy team and die horrifically.
People have been experimenting with various different builds, and different levels of Sadism. Seems like you really don't want to go below 70% Sadism, cause that's when your damage starts to take a hard dip.
Just from watching him on the PTR he seems strong, but I'm not sure if he's actually good or just PTR good. We'll see.
Alarak seems to fill the same niche as Anub'arak, especially if you take Deadly Charge at 10. He can get into the backline and just wreak havoc there. He already has a silence on a relatively short cooldown, and you can talent his kit to include a lot of nasty slows - you can turn Telekinesis into a mini-Mighty Gust, albeit at the cost of your own damage.
I can see really good players using Alarak + Medivh to fuck you up constantly. Like, your team will never want to be near that stupid portal as long as Alarak is alive.
a lot of this stuff is intuitive to me so it's hard to describe how to be better. I'm pretty sure my massive APM helps though, I spam clicks like crazy
anyway I have an assassin daily, might as well pour one out for valla cause I sure as shit am not playing her after today
0
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
if you see me playing hearthstone don't hesistate to ask if I want to play some games
I keep wanting to play with dibby and ducks but I never get on because I never see you guys on :P
(although it doesn't help that I don't keep the b.net launcher open because it makes my computer chug...)
Yeah I've been playing too much WoW to actually find five people to even complete TL placements. Maybe I will try this week after the new thing starts. TL gathering up the team and draft and game takes so long though. OW games are far shorter when I want a break from WoW.
So It Goes on
0
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Got a super toxic Leoric who died 8 times in the first 10 minutes of the game. Because of his constant dying we are always down 2-3 levels the entire game, and lose all the Punishers, too. I'm on Xul and am split pushing like fucking crazy to keep us in the game, but can't keep up with his feeding. At one point, during a shrine fight, he literally entombs me in with their Sonya and Tyrael, then body blocks me from leaving so they could kill me. By then, I was pretty sure he was trolling.
Once he hits 10 deaths, we are down to a single keep while the other team still has all of their structures. We're down 18-20 and we're all in separate lanes trying to get levels back before the next shrine.
Then the last shrine pops, and it's in one of the lanes where we don't have a keep. We just barely got 19, and I tell my team, "We can't wait, next Punisher wins, group up and fight". So we group up and fight. Leoric tries to suicide throw, but instead of letting him troll us we just follow him in and kill the other team while they are focusing on him. And miracle of miracles we actually win!
With 3 of them dead and two of them on the run, we finish the shrine, push with the Punisher and easily get a fort. Then, as we're pushing their keep, we manage to stagger another death.
Then it starts happening. Leoric mysteriously starts disconnecting over and over again. So the whole time we are pushing their keep, Leoric just walks up a few feet, disconnects, then reconnects. This happens for a good 30 seconds while we manage to get the keep down without him. But by then the 3 who died are back up, so we start mounting up to leave.
The 4 who are alive on the other team see Leoric just standing in front of their core while we are mounting up to leave, and they run in to pick him off. So I'm like, fuck this shit. This is our best chance to win, and this motherfucking troll is just going to force the throw if we let the game continue. So I ping on Leoric, run back at him, and my team sees what I'm doing and they follow me back in.
Root on Tyrael, we burn him down, he pops Sanc to save himself. I immediately hit Backlash run in headfirst into the middle of their team, wait 1 second, then pop Poison Nova. Sanc goes down, and he fucking melts. Then Sonya pops shortly after. Then Rehgar dies.
The entire time, as we're burning down their Core, while Li-Ming is chasing me all over desperately trying to get a reset, Leoric is just disconnecting and reconnecting over and over again.
Core dies. Everyone says "gg". Fuck you, you toxic motherfucker. We still carried your ass to a win.
Yeah I've been playing too much WoW to actually find five people to even complete TL placements. Maybe I will try this week after the new thing starts. TL gathering up the team and draft and game takes so long though. OW games are far shorter when I want a break from WoW.
I just used /teamleague
It was, and almost certainly still is, full of people just looking for 4 other warm bodies to fill a team to finish placements.
Posts
You're not terrible at Hots. I've always enjoyed playing with you. I think you have things to work on, just like everyone else does. I also think it has been a serious drag that this season drove you (and others) away, because we are mostly doing solo- and duo-queues now, and that can get tedious at times. I know that I've been away from Hots more than I'd like this season, just because nobody is ever on.
Yeah, I think I read somewhere that there was still one person playing No Man's Sky. I guess that's you? :razz:
Also, yeah. At this point, it's mostly WoW for me.
That's what I had assumed as well. It is sort of a self feeding cycle since ethereal are less people on, others don't try to be one as much, leading to less people on etc. Personally I still want to play but usually my entire friends list is WoW or some other game at the moment so I go play blood bowl, or duelyst or whatever.
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website
There's a couple of constants but they're usually already grouped and in game.
The wangs channel is ever so silent.
They recently lowered the GM pool by a couple hundred spots.
I wonder if that was to reflect the current player pool? Kinda sucks =(
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
I'm quite far behind on leveling heroes, so I'll be playing Auriel or Gul'dan if any of you folks wanna grab some games. I'm gonna buy the bundle that includes Alarak, but I don't plan on immediately playing him so I won't be competition for any of y'all who are wanting to try him out.
I'm on most nights but not till after like 11pm EST and most people appear to have already gone to bed by then. When I do get a group people are off to bed after like a game or two.
Nah, it's just them trying to make the GM title mean something. I mean, yes it's reflective of the size of the player pool, but it's not about a change in the size of the player pool.
Yeah same, at peak hours there's usually 3-5 people on tops between the wangs channel and my friends list (and I don't have a lot of friends not in that channel). This game borders on unplayable for me without at least one person grouped, mainly because I'm very intolerant people who have no clue about the mechanics of this game or are verbally abusive (which often overlap). If you're just not that good, eh whatever I'm not a superstar either.
Yeah I don't like watching my rank go down in addition to having 20+ minutes of my life wasted, because even one person on my team was either an asshat, didn't know how to play, or both.
It was simply not worth it and I was really looking forward to a competitive experience akin to ranked in SC2.
Leveling up the heroes and getting master skins is a nice diversion too. I do it way slower than some people here seem to (have 3 level 10s and 2 master skins - don't like thralls master skin), and it takes the place of any longer term goals. Mounts don't really motivate me either since I think most look super goofy.
I just hate drafting and love that QM exists. Once league of legends turned off dominion, with its relative freedom of hero choice and surplus of team fighting, I lost any desire to go back. HOTS has been great to fill that void.
I blame Legion for my absence.
I enjoy draft, actually. I just want a higher bar of companions to play with. I'd like to know how good of a player I actually am, but the matchmaker (in theory the game itself) doesn't allow for that.
Not every game is terrible, but the bad ones feel like a punch to the gut. Hell, every time I'm in a game and we start losing there's that moment where I'm just waiting for someone to go toxic.
I'm not really sure what you mean by the bolded section. Is it because this is a team game and not solo like SC2?
As long as it's a random sample of missing games then the win rates are probably pretty accurate.
Switch: 6589-6405-3399
Ah well! I was still a super fun and solid game.
Switch: 6589-6405-3399
Any initial impressions on the new guy yet?
He seems like he'll be pretty good. Good use of his W will make or break the character. He's definitely a character who scales with skill. He will be average to an average user and amazing in the hands of a highly skilled player.
I've enjoyed him on the PTR quite a bit.
Here's a tip for using his W as an escape, alt+w will propel you in the direction you are moving without needing to draw the line.
Otherwise you can still just spam Unranked Draft if you want a competitive game with somewhat-decent comps, and then QM is for when you want to play a specific hero and just let the chips fall where they may.
Competition anxiety is a real thing, and it's OK to acknowledge it and manage it accordingly, rather than just avoiding it entirely.
Well, I mean, it sucks and it's one of the reasons I don't like HL but that's not really a result of the rank system being poor, it's a result of a rank system. You lose, you go down in the rankings. It's like, the very core of a rank system.
For me it isn't competition anxiety. It's the inability to earn the rewards that I want that has caused serious burnout and fatigue. They give me a goal, and I am unable to achieve that goal, and it makes me hate playing.
He's a bit like if Kerrigan and Thrall had a weird mutant baby.
He's got a Kerrigan-esque combo where you push people into you with W, then Silence them with Q, then pop E. He lacks the engage potential of Kerrigan, I mean (Kerri can just jump right up to someone), but his Telekinesis -> Discord Strike combo is almost the same as Kerrigan's Impaling Blades -> Primal Grasp combo. Just with a Silence instead of a Stun.
And then of course he's a bit like Thrall cause he's got a lot of high bursty damage if he gets on you, and he's got an incredible poke tool with his E. He can very easily poke people out of lane early game just with his E. 6 second cooldown point-and-click ability.
His Ults... I'm not sure what to make of them yet. They seem okay. You can grab the other one at 20, so you're basically just taking what you need at that moment in time. Counter Strike is good for negating incoming damage (never EVER pop it pre-emptively, wait til you're being focused), but you CAN be stunned out of it. Deadly Charge is good for chasing and repositioning, and it's a pseudo escape. Guarantee you that you're gonna see Day 1 Alaraks popping Deadly Charge into the entire enemy team and die horrifically.
People have been experimenting with various different builds, and different levels of Sadism. Seems like you really don't want to go below 70% Sadism, cause that's when your damage starts to take a hard dip.
Just from watching him on the PTR he seems strong, but I'm not sure if he's actually good or just PTR good. We'll see.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
I wasn't amazing (GM) but I was pretty much always diamond rank, even at the height of SC2's hype and player pool, I was always diamond. I squeezed in a Master's a couple of times.
Even if I didn't hit diamond in some seasons and just managed to get platinum because of time to play, it was OK. I never played the meta builds (always be proxing) and those were still good ranks.
In this game, it feels like I have such little control due to pubs that the ranking system is that much less forgiving.
So, it deters me from playing ranked, on top of all the other stuff.
I know they are different games and different styles, but the APM and reaction time are kind of still there.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
FWIW I think you could hit Plat if you focused on it. I'm Gold 2, so I think if I bothered to play more games during the season I likely would've gotten the mount reward, and I think we're pretty comparable in skill when it comes to our strongest heroes.
Yes to both of these, I should have been more clear.
Part of it is that by nature of being a team-based game, any win/ lose system of ranking is going to be boinked due to the random nature of teammates.
And then there is the fact that as shyrke said, the ranking system is based entirely off of win/ loss which is the worst possible metric by which to judge player competence and skill.
What metrics do LoL and DotA? Is it win/loss or skill-based?
e-for clarity
Win/Loss afaik.
And yeah, I hate the rewards being tied to ranks. I really want those epic-level mounts.
At least I managed to get in 10 random TL games to secure the normal mount, so my placements were less stressful.
Yeah, I would agree with that. But the difference is, my best heroes are healers, and it's very hard to carry a team as a healer.
I have started trying to play more Thrall in my HL games because with him being a front-liner, plus having such a strong initiation tool in Sunder, you can pull the rest of your team along with you on engagements. But when Thrall isn't available to me I'm kind of screwed.
embrace the specialists
it is the only way
you know it to be true
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
Alarak seems to fill the same niche as Anub'arak, especially if you take Deadly Charge at 10. He can get into the backline and just wreak havoc there. He already has a silence on a relatively short cooldown, and you can talent his kit to include a lot of nasty slows - you can turn Telekinesis into a mini-Mighty Gust, albeit at the cost of your own damage.
I can see really good players using Alarak + Medivh to fuck you up constantly. Like, your team will never want to be near that stupid portal as long as Alarak is alive.
anyway I have an assassin daily, might as well pour one out for valla cause I sure as shit am not playing her after today
I keep wanting to play with dibby and ducks but I never get on because I never see you guys on :P
(although it doesn't help that I don't keep the b.net launcher open because it makes my computer chug...)
Map is BoE.
Sylv/Zag bans
They first pick Li-Ming
My team first picks .... Hammer/Tassadar
And that was gg right there.
They went Falstad/Chromie and destroyed us.
They were top 4 damage the whole game with me on Anub'arak in 5th spot.
Le sigh
@Dibby and I mostly play during the afternoons on the days I'm off.
I also tend to play mostly during late morning/early afternoon (~11 AM - 1 PM ET) and sometimes late afternoons.
If I'm on bnet and not doing nothin feel free to hit me up tho
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
Once he hits 10 deaths, we are down to a single keep while the other team still has all of their structures. We're down 18-20 and we're all in separate lanes trying to get levels back before the next shrine.
Then the last shrine pops, and it's in one of the lanes where we don't have a keep. We just barely got 19, and I tell my team, "We can't wait, next Punisher wins, group up and fight". So we group up and fight. Leoric tries to suicide throw, but instead of letting him troll us we just follow him in and kill the other team while they are focusing on him. And miracle of miracles we actually win!
With 3 of them dead and two of them on the run, we finish the shrine, push with the Punisher and easily get a fort. Then, as we're pushing their keep, we manage to stagger another death.
Then it starts happening. Leoric mysteriously starts disconnecting over and over again. So the whole time we are pushing their keep, Leoric just walks up a few feet, disconnects, then reconnects. This happens for a good 30 seconds while we manage to get the keep down without him. But by then the 3 who died are back up, so we start mounting up to leave.
The 4 who are alive on the other team see Leoric just standing in front of their core while we are mounting up to leave, and they run in to pick him off. So I'm like, fuck this shit. This is our best chance to win, and this motherfucking troll is just going to force the throw if we let the game continue. So I ping on Leoric, run back at him, and my team sees what I'm doing and they follow me back in.
Root on Tyrael, we burn him down, he pops Sanc to save himself. I immediately hit Backlash run in headfirst into the middle of their team, wait 1 second, then pop Poison Nova. Sanc goes down, and he fucking melts. Then Sonya pops shortly after. Then Rehgar dies.
The entire time, as we're burning down their Core, while Li-Ming is chasing me all over desperately trying to get a reset, Leoric is just disconnecting and reconnecting over and over again.
Core dies. Everyone says "gg". Fuck you, you toxic motherfucker. We still carried your ass to a win.
I just used /teamleague
It was, and almost certainly still is, full of people just looking for 4 other warm bodies to fill a team to finish placements.
Yeah, that's the first thing I did, and what I told my teammates to do, too.
But still, it feels good to pull out a win while one person is consciously trying to throw.