I'm having fun in hero league but losing much more than I win. The battles are always real battles, though, unlike what most QM are. If any of my HL teams had been in a QM we'd have won. I don't play just to win, though - I'm much rather lose a hard fought battle than roll over newbs over and over.
That said, I'm concerned that I'm tanking my MMR and I'm not sure what can be done about that... It's a team game and my teams seem to lose pretty often regardless of my own performance. Stats-wise playing zagara last night I was consistently the highest damage vs heroes, and 2nd vs structures, with among the least deaths. We made a couple team mistakes... Mostly it's people getting greedy and not pulling out of combat even when I or someone else calls for a retreat. I also had a sylvanas and tyrande who thought laning late in the game when the team needed their help was a good idea.
Team communication has been good, though.
I dunno, what's the solution? Wait till 40 and try to TL with some folks and then you can tell me if it's just all me?
My new strategy is to stop worrying about rank and mmr
Which does not stem the salt tides sometime but eh. I try to play my char well every game and have fun.
My new strategy is to stop worrying about rank and mmr
Which does not stem the salt tides sometime but eh. I try to play my char well every game and have fun.
Yeah, I'm enjoying myself thoroughly because I don't really care THAT much. I'm more worried that as more people level up into HL that I'll be stuck with fools.
I dunno, the whole concept of rank and mmr is very confusing to me in a random person game that's so team oriented. But maybe on the back side they can do enough analytics to actually figure out my contribution to the team vs other people. But when Sylvanas insists on running off alone all game when we really need them on occasion in team fights or my teammates' idea of a retreat is run backwards a bit, then turn around for a sec indecisively and then run again, and we lose... It seems odd that it's negative against me.
I had just a bunch of bad games with this last night. I think i went 1-9, with the only time we won due to a hilarious maw of destiny which allowed our team to steal the boss and wipe their team, even though we were two levels behind. I don't feel like this game is any less snowbally than other mobas (they could throw at baron in LOL, for instance), so I'm sort of confused why there isn't a surrender button.
It's less snowbally because you can be losing all gamebut if you survive until late game (post lvl 20) you can still win. You'll most likely be no more than 2 levels behind and at that point if you can manage to win a single teamfight you can rush the core and win the game.
I had just a bunch of bad games with this last night. I think i went 1-9, with the only time we won due to a hilarious maw of destiny which allowed our team to steal the boss and wipe their team, even though we were two levels behind. I don't feel like this game is any less snowbally than other mobas (they could throw at baron in LOL, for instance), so I'm sort of confused why there isn't a surrender button.
1. If you're losing badly enough you need to surrender the game is going to be over in 10 minutes anyway. You're barely saving any time (vs. saving 20-30 minutes in LoL).
2. Comebacks are actually very common if your team roams as 5 late in the game. Boss wipes+steals aren't rare and are devastating. Picking off 1 or 2 out of position characters suddenly puts you at a big advantage even if you're down 2 levels. Good play and capitalizing on enemy mistakes are incredibly potent late in the game, you have to be 4 or more levels behind before things come close to being hopeless.
I had just a bunch of bad games with this last night. I think i went 1-9, with the only time we won due to a hilarious maw of destiny which allowed our team to steal the boss and wipe their team, even though we were two levels behind. I don't feel like this game is any less snowbally than other mobas (they could throw at baron in LOL, for instance), so I'm sort of confused why there isn't a surrender button.
1. If you're losing badly enough you need to surrender the game is going to be over in 10 minutes anyway. You're barely saving any time (vs. saving 20-30 minutes in LoL).
2. Comebacks are actually very common if your team roams as 5 late in the game. Boss wipes+steals aren't rare and are devastating. Picking off 1 or 2 out of position characters suddenly puts you at a big advantage even if you're down 2 levels. Good play and capitalizing on enemy mistakes are incredibly potent late in the game, you have to be 4 or more levels behind before things come close to being hopeless.
Yup. Because of how Hero strength scales compared to Structures and because of death timers scaling higher and higher and objectives, late game you can do alot of damage if you can wipe the other team. And the exponential leveling curve means the power levels even out by late game.
Which all comes together to mean that if you can start playing better then the other team, there's almost no amount of down you can be and not turn it around.
We have a number of Talent reworks coming to Heroes of the Storm with our next patch. Malfurion, Brightwing, Rehgar, and the Lost Vikings will be receiving significant changes. These changes coincide with our trend of diversifying our characters and offering new talent builds. Do note that the Lost Vikings have a high win rate, so their incoming changes are intended to result in a lower win rate, alongside the goal of greater talent diversity.
Promote
We’ve heard a strong amount of feedback, specifically from the competitive scene, about the Promote talent. We like that Promote offers an early game lane advantage, but it can be a problem as players start spending an exceedingly long time killing a Promoted enemy Minion. We’re changing Promote to affect PvE only, meaning a promoted Minion will do increased damage to enemy Minions and structures, and take reduced damage from these same sources. However, their new combat abilities will have no impact on other Heroes, allowing for players to quickly clean up a Promoted Minion wave.
Daze Tech
We are changing the way many of the knockbacks in Heroes of the Storm currently work. Previously, the majority of abilities that moved an enemy character also applied a stun during the movement. This means abilities like Tychus’ grenade or Raynor’s Penetrating Round would double as a Stun for channeled abilities. With this new tech, many of these knockback abilities will no longer stun mobile channeling abilities including Tychus’ Overkill, Li Li’s Jug of 1000 cups, Sonya’s Whirlwind, and Valla’s Strafe. Knockback effects that we’d like to apply a stun, Muradin’s Haymaker for example, will keep the stun, but it will be explicitly part of the ability and called out in the tooltip. As an added note, stationary channels such as Mosh Pit and Ravenous Spirit will still be interrupted by a knockback effect.
---
Simply put, Possession is the least-picked Heroic ability in the game right now, and we’re excited to try out some changes to make the Heroic an enticing choice. There have been a number of great suggestions from the community on how to give this ability a makeover, and we’ve elected to run with a player-suggested alteration. Possession will now be a charge-based Heroic ability. Players will have 7 charges of Possession, allowing them to take control of an entire enemy Minion wave.
At level 20, you’ll have the option to receive charges more frequently, have a higher maximum charge count, and also be able to spend several charges on an enemy Mercenary. We’re excited to see what you guys think of these changes, and hope to see continued feedback after you’ve had a chance to try it out. We expect that Wailing Arrow will still be the primary Heroic as it is highly impactful in team fights, but anticipate that some split push builds will be able to utilize Possession effectively.
Balance Changes
Before our latest patch, Anub’arak wasn’t seeing a lot of play and there were complaints surrounding his Beetle AI logic. While improving the Beetle AI, we also removed some small pre-cast delays making Anub’arak more responsive and fun to play. We expected the alterations to increase Anub’arak’s win rate but we were not expecting him to shoot to the top of our win charts. To bring Anub’arak’s balance back in line, we are tweaking his Beetles and reducing damage from Locust Swarm. The beetles will keep the improved AI functionality, but they will have reduced damage and move slower. We like how Anub’arak is playing now, so we are taking a conservative approach to these changes. We will continue to make further changes if more tuning is needed.
Illidan has been a popular balance topic for a while, but we’ve held off on making changes as Illidan’s win rate isn’t exceedingly high. Across all matches, Illidan is near the middle of the pack but starts to rise as we look at higher-skilled matches. In these particular matches we commonly see Illidan paired with a Rehgar or Abathur, helping to unlock his maximum potential. At these higher-skilled matches we also see a significant increase in Metamorphosis play.
To address these balance issues while also increasing Heroic Ability diversity, we’re looking to make some changes to Metamorphosis. Right now, it’s simply doing too many things too well. Metamorphosis damage is similar to The Hunt at level 20 and is often hitting multiple targets, so we’re reducing its damage significantly. Metamorphosis will keep a trivial amount of damage so it’ll continue to reveal cloaked heroes, dismount characters, etc. Along with the reduced damage, we’re also decreasing the impact area size, making it more difficult to hit an entire enemy team. With these changes, The Hunt becomes the better Heroic for isolating a single enemy hero, and Metamorphosis becomes primarily about repositioning and survival.
With the new Daze Tech described above, Li Li’s Jug of 1000 Cups will become more powerful as fewer abilities will be able interrupt the Heroic. We are also changing the way blinds, or blinding attacks, work. Currently, being blinded prevents your next X attacks, and a secondary Y duration before falling off is enforced in case you don’t auto-attack for a long period of time. With this patch, we are removing the X hits and going purely with the Y duration, although these blind abilities will be tuned to have much shorter durations than the current iteration. Overall, the changes will be a solid buff to blind abilities against rapid auto-attackers like Illidan or Valla, but a nerf against enemies with slower attacks. For this reason, characters with blinds should become a more significant auto-attack counter.
Latest Hero: Kael’thas
Balance wise, Kael’thas has a win rate near the middle of our Assassins and has an appropriate impact on the game. In the future we’d like to provide Kael’thas players with more diverse talent options instead of the single build most players are selecting now. There will be no Kael’thas changes in this patch, but adjustments to address talent diversity will probably hit in the near future.
With this episode of Developer Insights, game designer Matthew Cooper is here to chat about a few of the changes you’ll be seeing to balance and hero functionality in the near-future. Let’s dive right in and see what’s coming to the Nexus.
Hero and Talent Reworks
We have a number of Talent reworks coming to Heroes of the Storm with our next patch. Malfurion, Brightwing, Rehgar, and the Lost Vikings will be receiving significant changes. These changes coincide with our trend of diversifying our characters and offering new talent builds. Do note that the Lost Vikings have a high win rate, so their incoming changes are intended to result in a lower win rate, alongside the goal of greater talent diversity.
Promote
We’ve heard a strong amount of feedback, specifically from the competitive scene, about the Promote talent. We like that Promote offers an early game lane advantage, but it can be a problem as players start spending an exceedingly long time killing a Promoted enemy Minion. We’re changing Promote to affect PvE only, meaning a promoted Minion will do increased damage to enemy Minions and structures, and take reduced damage from these same sources. However, their new combat abilities will have no impact on other Heroes, allowing for players to quickly clean up a Promoted Minion wave.
Daze Tech
We are changing the way many of the knockbacks in Heroes of the Storm currently work. Previously, the majority of abilities that moved an enemy character also applied a stun during the movement. This means abilities like Tychus’ grenade or Raynor’s Penetrating Round would double as a Stun for channeled abilities. With this new tech, many of these knockback abilities will no longer stun mobile channeling abilities including Tychus’ Overkill, Li Li’s Jug of 1000 cups, Sonya’s Whirlwind, and Valla’s Strafe. Knockback effects that we’d like to apply a stun, Muradin’s Haymaker for example, will keep the stun, but it will be explicitly part of the ability and called out in the tooltip. As an added note, stationary channels such as Mosh Pit and Ravenous Spirit will still be interrupted by a knockback effect.
Sylvanas
Simply put, Possession is the least-picked Heroic ability in the game right now, and we’re excited to try out some changes to make the Heroic an enticing choice. There have been a number of great suggestions from the community on how to give this ability a makeover, and we’ve elected to run with a player-suggested alteration. Possession will now be a charge-based Heroic ability. Players will have 7 charges of Possession, allowing them to take control of an entire enemy Minion wave.
At level 20, you’ll have the option to receive charges more frequently, have a higher maximum charge count, and also be able to spend several charges on an enemy Mercenary. We’re excited to see what you guys think of these changes, and hope to see continued feedback after you’ve had a chance to try it out. We expect that Wailing Arrow will still be the primary Heroic as it is highly impactful in team fights, but anticipate that some split push builds will be able to utilize Possession effectively.
Balance Changes
Before our latest patch, Anub’arak wasn’t seeing a lot of play and there were complaints surrounding his Beetle AI logic. While improving the Beetle AI, we also removed some small pre-cast delays making Anub’arak more responsive and fun to play. We expected the alterations to increase Anub’arak’s win rate but we were not expecting him to shoot to the top of our win charts. To bring Anub’arak’s balance back in line, we are tweaking his Beetles and reducing damage from Locust Swarm. The beetles will keep the improved AI functionality, but they will have reduced damage and move slower. We like how Anub’arak is playing now, so we are taking a conservative approach to these changes. We will continue to make further changes if more tuning is needed.
Illidan has been a popular balance topic for a while, but we’ve held off on making changes as Illidan’s win rate isn’t exceedingly high. Across all matches, Illidan is near the middle of the pack but starts to rise as we look at higher-skilled matches. In these particular matches we commonly see Illidan paired with a Rehgar or Abathur, helping to unlock his maximum potential. At these higher-skilled matches we also see a significant increase in Metamorphosis play.
To address these balance issues while also increasing Heroic Ability diversity, we’re looking to make some changes to Metamorphosis. Right now, it’s simply doing too many things too well. Metamorphosis damage is similar to The Hunt at level 20 and is often hitting multiple targets, so we’re reducing its damage significantly. Metamorphosis will keep a trivial amount of damage so it’ll continue to reveal cloaked heroes, dismount characters, etc. Along with the reduced damage, we’re also decreasing the impact area size, making it more difficult to hit an entire enemy team. With these changes, The Hunt becomes the better Heroic for isolating a single enemy hero, and Metamorphosis becomes primarily about repositioning and survival.
With the new Daze Tech described above, Li Li’s Jug of 1000 Cups will become more powerful as fewer abilities will be able interrupt the Heroic. We are also changing the way blinds, or blinding attacks, work. Currently, being blinded prevents your next X attacks, and a secondary Y duration before falling off is enforced in case you don’t auto-attack for a long period of time. With this patch, we are removing the X hits and going purely with the Y duration, although these blind abilities will be tuned to have much shorter durations than the current iteration. Overall, the changes will be a solid buff to blind abilities against rapid auto-attackers like Illidan or Valla, but a nerf against enemies with slower attacks. For this reason, characters with blinds should become a more significant auto-attack counter.
Latest Hero: Kael’thas
Balance wise, Kael’thas has a win rate near the middle of our Assassins and has an appropriate impact on the game. In the future we’d like to provide Kael’thas players with more diverse talent options instead of the single build most players are selecting now. There will be no Kael’thas changes in this patch, but adjustments to address talent diversity will probably hit in the near future.
And that about does it for this Patch Preview. Thanks to Matt Cooper and the design team for chatting with us about the content coming in the next update. Let us know what you’re most looking forward to in the comments below, and we’ll see you in the Nexus!
Simply put, Possession is the least-picked Heroic ability in the game right now, and we’re excited to try out some changes to make the Heroic an enticing choice
Some interesting changes. Without numbers it is difficult to tell what the impact will be. I definitely want to try out lili again given the alterations.
I think I actually really like it, honestly. Li Li's 1000 Cups is really strong, for example, but WAY too weak against all the various interrupts. It sucks popping it and instantly getting interrupted by a stray knockback. This should make it a lot more reliable. Strafe is a safer pick now too, but honestly both Strafe and Rain of Vengeance are amazing. Still, helps.
Sonya gets a bit stronger too, although honestly her kit is still somewhat lacking.
Knockbacks doubling as interrupts was just too strong, I think.
I'm having fun in hero league but losing much more than I win. The battles are always real battles, though, unlike what most QM are. If any of my HL teams had been in a QM we'd have won. I don't play just to win, though - I'm much rather lose a hard fought battle than roll over newbs over and over.
That said, I'm concerned that I'm tanking my MMR and I'm not sure what can be done about that... It's a team game and my teams seem to lose pretty often regardless of my own performance. Stats-wise playing zagara last night I was consistently the highest damage vs heroes, and 2nd vs structures, with among the least deaths. We made a couple team mistakes... Mostly it's people getting greedy and not pulling out of combat even when I or someone else calls for a retreat. I also had a sylvanas and tyrande who thought laning late in the game when the team needed their help was a good idea.
Team communication has been good, though.
I dunno, what's the solution? Wait till 40 and try to TL with some folks and then you can tell me if it's just all me?
You can group queue with people in HL, too. Do so with some PA folks; I bet you'll have a better time. There are a bunch of us at this point that HL almost all the time; i find it much more satisfying than QM, but at the same time there are usually enough of us on that I very rarely solo queue anymore.
Generalísimo de Fuerzas Armadas de la República Argentina
I'm having fun in hero league but losing much more than I win. The battles are always real battles, though, unlike what most QM are. If any of my HL teams had been in a QM we'd have won. I don't play just to win, though - I'm much rather lose a hard fought battle than roll over newbs over and over.
That said, I'm concerned that I'm tanking my MMR and I'm not sure what can be done about that... It's a team game and my teams seem to lose pretty often regardless of my own performance. Stats-wise playing zagara last night I was consistently the highest damage vs heroes, and 2nd vs structures, with among the least deaths. We made a couple team mistakes... Mostly it's people getting greedy and not pulling out of combat even when I or someone else calls for a retreat. I also had a sylvanas and tyrande who thought laning late in the game when the team needed their help was a good idea.
Team communication has been good, though.
I dunno, what's the solution? Wait till 40 and try to TL with some folks and then you can tell me if it's just all me?
You can group queue with people in HL, too. Do so with some PA folks; I bet you'll have a better time. There are a bunch of us at this point that HL almost all the time; i find it much more satisfying than QM, but at the same time there are usually enough of us on that I very rarely solo queue anymore.
This is so very, very true.
I was initially opposed to the idea of Hero League, I didn't think I'd like it at all.
So now, having actually done it, I fucking love it.
It's very tempting to queue up for solo queue, whether it's QM or HL, just because you want to play. But honestly do yourself a favor and don't, it's NOT worth the overflow of sodium. Just wait for other people to be on and play with them. Even ONE other PA duder will help turn the tides. Being in Vent or some other voicechat program helps too.
I had just a bunch of bad games with this last night. I think i went 1-9, with the only time we won due to a hilarious maw of destiny which allowed our team to steal the boss and wipe their team, even though we were two levels behind. I don't feel like this game is any less snowbally than other mobas (they could throw at baron in LOL, for instance), so I'm sort of confused why there isn't a surrender button.
1. If you're losing badly enough you need to surrender the game is going to be over in 10 minutes anyway. You're barely saving any time (vs. saving 20-30 minutes in LoL).
2. Comebacks are actually very common if your team roams as 5 late in the game. Boss wipes+steals aren't rare and are devastating. Picking off 1 or 2 out of position characters suddenly puts you at a big advantage even if you're down 2 levels. Good play and capitalizing on enemy mistakes are incredibly potent late in the game, you have to be 4 or more levels behind before things come close to being hopeless.
Yup. Because of how Hero strength scales compared to Structures and because of death timers scaling higher and higher and objectives, late game you can do alot of damage if you can wipe the other team. And the exponential leveling curve means the power levels even out by late game.
Which all comes together to mean that if you can start playing better then the other team, there's almost no amount of down you can be and not turn it around.
This has not been my experience at all. Losses take forever. Maybe because i play at a low level of play where the winning team doesn't really effectively push, and the losing team never team fights to take advantage.
I saw Grubby playing a game on Sunday where he built this weird autoattack Kerrigan style. They had an Abathur and Rehgar on the team and he was basically doing as much (or more) damage than the enemy team's Illidan. Huge impact in team fights and massive punishment for bad positioning.
I had just a bunch of bad games with this last night. I think i went 1-9, with the only time we won due to a hilarious maw of destiny which allowed our team to steal the boss and wipe their team, even though we were two levels behind. I don't feel like this game is any less snowbally than other mobas (they could throw at baron in LOL, for instance), so I'm sort of confused why there isn't a surrender button.
1. If you're losing badly enough you need to surrender the game is going to be over in 10 minutes anyway. You're barely saving any time (vs. saving 20-30 minutes in LoL).
2. Comebacks are actually very common if your team roams as 5 late in the game. Boss wipes+steals aren't rare and are devastating. Picking off 1 or 2 out of position characters suddenly puts you at a big advantage even if you're down 2 levels. Good play and capitalizing on enemy mistakes are incredibly potent late in the game, you have to be 4 or more levels behind before things come close to being hopeless.
Yup. Because of how Hero strength scales compared to Structures and because of death timers scaling higher and higher and objectives, late game you can do alot of damage if you can wipe the other team. And the exponential leveling curve means the power levels even out by late game.
Which all comes together to mean that if you can start playing better then the other team, there's almost no amount of down you can be and not turn it around.
This has not been my experience at all. Losses take forever. Maybe because i play at a low level of play where the winning team doesn't really effectively push, and the losing team never team fights to take advantage.
Either way, comebacks are quite common. As long as your team doesn't give up, you aren't out until your Core reaches 0%.
No, not 10%, 3%, or even 1% (all of which have seen comebacks, in PA games and pro games). Until you actually literally lose, you still have a decent chance of coming back to win.
knockback and blind changes seem good for li li. i like this, since li li is fun but i find it hard to justify playing her when uther and brightwing exist.
I saw Grubby playing a game on Sunday where he built this weird autoattack Kerrigan style. They had an Abathur and Rehgar on the team and he was basically doing as much (or more) damage than the enemy team's Illidan. Huge impact in team fights and massive punishment for bad positioning.
This is... applicable to my interests...
Don't suppose you have the build? I'd love to try it.
1. A team grabs early advantage and grinds down the enemy keeps before level 20 and use their level advantage to crush the core (usually with the help of some kind of map feature like a golem, dragon knight or whatever).
2. One decisive fight post-20. You/They knock out 3-5 players and gain a 2 player advantage (at least), then before the guys are out of the penalty box is over the dominant team burns through any remaining keeps and blow up the core. Often this is the team that took an early lead, but it can swing both ways.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Several Abilities were unintentionally providing brief moments of Unstoppable behavior during use. The following Abilities no longer provide Unstoppable:
Chen -- Flying Kick (Q)
Falstad -- Barrel Roll (E)
Illidan -- Dive (Q)
Illidan -- Sweeping Strikes (with the Unbound talent) (W)
Kerrigan -- Ravage (Q)
A number of Hero Abilities were not intended to completely Stun enemy targets. In these cases, Stuns have been converted to Dazes, which act similarly, but will no longer interrupt Abilities that can be channeled while the Hero is moving.
For example: Dazing Valla will not stop her from channeling Strafe.
The following abilities will now Daze, rather than Stun, enemy Heroes:
Brightwing -- Emerald Wind (R)
Chen -- Wandering Keg (R)
Johanna -- Condemn (W)
Diablo -- Shadow Charge (Q)
E.T.C. -- Face Melt (W)
Falstad -- Mighty Gust (R)
Kerrigan -- Primal Grasp (E)
Raynor -- Penetrating Round (Q)
Sgt. Hammer -- Concussive Blast (W)
Thrall -- Sundering (R)
Tychus -- Frag Grenade (W)
These changes are a huge nerf to affected characters.
You can group queue with people in HL, too. Do so with some PA folks; I bet you'll have a better time. There are a bunch of us at this point that HL almost all the time; i find it much more satisfying than QM, but at the same time there are usually enough of us on that I very rarely solo queue anymore.
Cool, I'll give that a try! I definitely find HL more fun than QM. Losing a hard fought battle in HL with people who have at least a decent idea of what they're doing is way more fun than getting rolled in QM or rolling an enemy team.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
+3
Options
cptruggedI think it has something to do with free will.Registered Userregular
Holy cow. I was expecting things like Condemn and Facemelt to be affected by the daze change.
Starting today, the pool of Battlegrounds available in all modes, except Custom Games, will be temporarily limited to the following:
Battlefield of Eternity
Sky Temple
Tomb of the Spider Queen
Cursed Hollow
AKA: No Haunted Mines till Tuesday, July 7.
I don't like the Arcane Flare changes to BW. She did not need a damage nerf to her only offensive ability, especially while removing the damage from Poly and removing Envenom. If they made the projectile move 20% faster, I would have called it even, but gross.
More that won't get interrupted: Kerrigan's purple spider sense, Malfurion's red spider sense, Azmo's lazorz, etc.
Yes on what should still be interruptible, along with: Falstad's shock n awe, Tyrael's invincible ult (I think? I've only ever seen this used once), Zagara and all those others who use that life/mana regen talent, Gazlowe's lazors,
Boy that's a huge nerf to Johanna and means she can only interrupt abilities with ults. Really hurts her viability against heroes like Azmodan as well, as he can just laser her with impunity now.
Best PTR change:
No Haunted Mines till Tuesday, July 7.
I think I missed something - are they making changes to haunted mines?
It's just a thing so people can play the new map more often.
+1
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Starting today, the pool of Battlegrounds available in all modes, except Custom Games, will be temporarily limited to the following:
Battlefield of Eternity
Sky Temple
Tomb of the Spider Queen
Cursed Hollow
AKA: No Haunted Mines till Tuesday, July 7.
I don't like the Arcane Flare changes to BW. She did not need a damage nerf to her only offensive ability, especially while removing the damage from Poly and removing Envenom. If they made the projectile move 20% faster, I would have called it even, but gross.
Oh thank God, no fucking Garden of Terror fuck Garden of Terror.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
Posts
My new strategy is to stop worrying about rank and mmr
Which does not stem the salt tides sometime but eh. I try to play my char well every game and have fun.
Yeah, I'm enjoying myself thoroughly because I don't really care THAT much. I'm more worried that as more people level up into HL that I'll be stuck with fools.
I dunno, the whole concept of rank and mmr is very confusing to me in a random person game that's so team oriented. But maybe on the back side they can do enough analytics to actually figure out my contribution to the team vs other people. But when Sylvanas insists on running off alone all game when we really need them on occasion in team fights or my teammates' idea of a retreat is run backwards a bit, then turn around for a sec indecisively and then run again, and we lose... It seems odd that it's negative against me.
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1. If you're losing badly enough you need to surrender the game is going to be over in 10 minutes anyway. You're barely saving any time (vs. saving 20-30 minutes in LoL).
2. Comebacks are actually very common if your team roams as 5 late in the game. Boss wipes+steals aren't rare and are devastating. Picking off 1 or 2 out of position characters suddenly puts you at a big advantage even if you're down 2 levels. Good play and capitalizing on enemy mistakes are incredibly potent late in the game, you have to be 4 or more levels behind before things come close to being hopeless.
Yup. Because of how Hero strength scales compared to Structures and because of death timers scaling higher and higher and objectives, late game you can do alot of damage if you can wipe the other team. And the exponential leveling curve means the power levels even out by late game.
Which all comes together to mean that if you can start playing better then the other team, there's almost no amount of down you can be and not turn it around.
XBL: InvaderJims
Bnet: Pudgestomp#11153
XBL: InvaderJims
Bnet: Pudgestomp#11153
Definitely. After the dust settles from the BW and Malf changes, I wonder if this will bring Lili up a few pegs on the tier list.
XBL: InvaderJims
Bnet: Pudgestomp#11153
Hero and Talent Reworks
We have a number of Talent reworks coming to Heroes of the Storm with our next patch. Malfurion, Brightwing, Rehgar, and the Lost Vikings will be receiving significant changes. These changes coincide with our trend of diversifying our characters and offering new talent builds. Do note that the Lost Vikings have a high win rate, so their incoming changes are intended to result in a lower win rate, alongside the goal of greater talent diversity.
Promote
We’ve heard a strong amount of feedback, specifically from the competitive scene, about the Promote talent. We like that Promote offers an early game lane advantage, but it can be a problem as players start spending an exceedingly long time killing a Promoted enemy Minion. We’re changing Promote to affect PvE only, meaning a promoted Minion will do increased damage to enemy Minions and structures, and take reduced damage from these same sources. However, their new combat abilities will have no impact on other Heroes, allowing for players to quickly clean up a Promoted Minion wave.
Daze Tech
We are changing the way many of the knockbacks in Heroes of the Storm currently work. Previously, the majority of abilities that moved an enemy character also applied a stun during the movement. This means abilities like Tychus’ grenade or Raynor’s Penetrating Round would double as a Stun for channeled abilities. With this new tech, many of these knockback abilities will no longer stun mobile channeling abilities including Tychus’ Overkill, Li Li’s Jug of 1000 cups, Sonya’s Whirlwind, and Valla’s Strafe. Knockback effects that we’d like to apply a stun, Muradin’s Haymaker for example, will keep the stun, but it will be explicitly part of the ability and called out in the tooltip. As an added note, stationary channels such as Mosh Pit and Ravenous Spirit will still be interrupted by a knockback effect.
Sylvanas
Simply put, Possession is the least-picked Heroic ability in the game right now, and we’re excited to try out some changes to make the Heroic an enticing choice. There have been a number of great suggestions from the community on how to give this ability a makeover, and we’ve elected to run with a player-suggested alteration. Possession will now be a charge-based Heroic ability. Players will have 7 charges of Possession, allowing them to take control of an entire enemy Minion wave.
At level 20, you’ll have the option to receive charges more frequently, have a higher maximum charge count, and also be able to spend several charges on an enemy Mercenary. We’re excited to see what you guys think of these changes, and hope to see continued feedback after you’ve had a chance to try it out. We expect that Wailing Arrow will still be the primary Heroic as it is highly impactful in team fights, but anticipate that some split push builds will be able to utilize Possession effectively.
Balance Changes
Before our latest patch, Anub’arak wasn’t seeing a lot of play and there were complaints surrounding his Beetle AI logic. While improving the Beetle AI, we also removed some small pre-cast delays making Anub’arak more responsive and fun to play. We expected the alterations to increase Anub’arak’s win rate but we were not expecting him to shoot to the top of our win charts. To bring Anub’arak’s balance back in line, we are tweaking his Beetles and reducing damage from Locust Swarm. The beetles will keep the improved AI functionality, but they will have reduced damage and move slower. We like how Anub’arak is playing now, so we are taking a conservative approach to these changes. We will continue to make further changes if more tuning is needed.
Illidan has been a popular balance topic for a while, but we’ve held off on making changes as Illidan’s win rate isn’t exceedingly high. Across all matches, Illidan is near the middle of the pack but starts to rise as we look at higher-skilled matches. In these particular matches we commonly see Illidan paired with a Rehgar or Abathur, helping to unlock his maximum potential. At these higher-skilled matches we also see a significant increase in Metamorphosis play.
To address these balance issues while also increasing Heroic Ability diversity, we’re looking to make some changes to Metamorphosis. Right now, it’s simply doing too many things too well. Metamorphosis damage is similar to The Hunt at level 20 and is often hitting multiple targets, so we’re reducing its damage significantly. Metamorphosis will keep a trivial amount of damage so it’ll continue to reveal cloaked heroes, dismount characters, etc. Along with the reduced damage, we’re also decreasing the impact area size, making it more difficult to hit an entire enemy team. With these changes, The Hunt becomes the better Heroic for isolating a single enemy hero, and Metamorphosis becomes primarily about repositioning and survival.
With the new Daze Tech described above, Li Li’s Jug of 1000 Cups will become more powerful as fewer abilities will be able interrupt the Heroic. We are also changing the way blinds, or blinding attacks, work. Currently, being blinded prevents your next X attacks, and a secondary Y duration before falling off is enforced in case you don’t auto-attack for a long period of time. With this patch, we are removing the X hits and going purely with the Y duration, although these blind abilities will be tuned to have much shorter durations than the current iteration. Overall, the changes will be a solid buff to blind abilities against rapid auto-attackers like Illidan or Valla, but a nerf against enemies with slower attacks. For this reason, characters with blinds should become a more significant auto-attack counter.
Latest Hero: Kael’thas
Balance wise, Kael’thas has a win rate near the middle of our Assassins and has an appropriate impact on the game. In the future we’d like to provide Kael’thas players with more diverse talent options instead of the single build most players are selecting now. There will be no Kael’thas changes in this patch, but adjustments to address talent diversity will probably hit in the near future.
And that about does it for this Patch Preview. Thanks to Matt Cooper and the design team for chatting with us about the content coming in the next update. Let us know what you’re most looking forward to in the comments below, and we’ll see you in the Nexus!
Edit: Undead monkey beat me to it!
That bad huh? You don't say.
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I think I actually really like it, honestly. Li Li's 1000 Cups is really strong, for example, but WAY too weak against all the various interrupts. It sucks popping it and instantly getting interrupted by a stray knockback. This should make it a lot more reliable. Strafe is a safer pick now too, but honestly both Strafe and Rain of Vengeance are amazing. Still, helps.
Sonya gets a bit stronger too, although honestly her kit is still somewhat lacking.
Knockbacks doubling as interrupts was just too strong, I think.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
You can group queue with people in HL, too. Do so with some PA folks; I bet you'll have a better time. There are a bunch of us at this point that HL almost all the time; i find it much more satisfying than QM, but at the same time there are usually enough of us on that I very rarely solo queue anymore.
This is so very, very true.
I was initially opposed to the idea of Hero League, I didn't think I'd like it at all.
So now, having actually done it, I fucking love it.
It's very tempting to queue up for solo queue, whether it's QM or HL, just because you want to play. But honestly do yourself a favor and don't, it's NOT worth the overflow of sodium. Just wait for other people to be on and play with them. Even ONE other PA duder will help turn the tides. Being in Vent or some other voicechat program helps too.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
This has not been my experience at all. Losses take forever. Maybe because i play at a low level of play where the winning team doesn't really effectively push, and the losing team never team fights to take advantage.
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
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Either way, comebacks are quite common. As long as your team doesn't give up, you aren't out until your Core reaches 0%.
No, not 10%, 3%, or even 1% (all of which have seen comebacks, in PA games and pro games). Until you actually literally lose, you still have a decent chance of coming back to win.
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Steam profile
This is... applicable to my interests...
Don't suppose you have the build? I'd love to try it.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
1. A team grabs early advantage and grinds down the enemy keeps before level 20 and use their level advantage to crush the core (usually with the help of some kind of map feature like a golem, dragon knight or whatever).
2. One decisive fight post-20. You/They knock out 3-5 players and gain a 2 player advantage (at least), then before the guys are out of the penalty box is over the dominant team burns through any remaining keeps and blow up the core. Often this is the team that took an early lead, but it can swing both ways.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Notable:
These changes are a huge nerf to affected characters.
Streaming 8PST on weeknights
Cool, I'll give that a try! I definitely find HL more fun than QM. Losing a hard fought battle in HL with people who have at least a decent idea of what they're doing is way more fun than getting rolled in QM or rolling an enemy team.
Switch: 6589-6405-3399
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
But Emerald Wind, Wandering Keg, and Sundering?
Dayum.
Also, the new battleground looks nuts. Kael and Malfurion and ETC will love those levels as they can play the area denial game.
New Battleground, More Often
Starting today, the pool of Battlegrounds available in all modes, except Custom Games, will be temporarily limited to the following:
Battlefield of Eternity
Sky Temple
Tomb of the Spider Queen
Cursed Hollow
AKA: No Haunted Mines till Tuesday, July 7.
I don't like the Arcane Flare changes to BW. She did not need a damage nerf to her only offensive ability, especially while removing the damage from Poly and removing Envenom. If they made the projectile move 20% faster, I would have called it even, but gross.
Channeled abilities that are grounded will still get interrupted like Nazeebo's spirit, ETC's dance thingie, etc..
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
strafe, whirlwind, jugs what else?
triple tap, mosh pit, spirit, pyroblast should still be interruptable?
That's a good chunk of gold for people who have leveled the hell out of heroes.
XBL: InvaderJims
Bnet: Pudgestomp#11153
Yes on what should still be interruptible, along with: Falstad's shock n awe, Tyrael's invincible ult (I think? I've only ever seen this used once), Zagara and all those others who use that life/mana regen talent, Gazlowe's lazors,
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
I read that as Account level in the notes. That makes a lot more sense now as a hero level reward.
Woah. That's gonna by like 10k gold for me. (I've been working on getting all the master portraits unlocked, if you were wondering)
Battle.net: morgancoke#1589
Titan's Creed: Jump first, don't ask questions, punch everything
Wooooooooo
I think I missed something - are they making changes to haunted mines?
Switch: 6589-6405-3399
Oh thank God, no fucking Garden of Terror fuck Garden of Terror.