"Why the Sylvanas Patch EXP changes really hurt the game"
The game has become much more snowbally, and it's to the detriment of the game.. Many games prior to this patch felt like basketball games going down to the last minute. But today, on both the casual and pro level, we're seeing so many more games just be one way stomps that are far less fun. The Sylvanas patch EXP changes are what I think are the main culprit - this is why.
Yeah, the lanes are there, and they have their importance, but the game is always going to be about the team brawl.
That's not what is going on here though - it's that early kills are a literal 1/4 of an EXP bar starting about level 4. It means getting a kill on someone is huge now in the early game- this did not used to be the case. Previously, the big loss in EXP came from the loss of soak and potential tower push. If you had a bad player on your team feeding - it sucked, but you could handle it if you sent someone to the other lane. Now? They actively start punishing your team for bad players feeding, starting very early on. This is really not healthy for the game because it's exacerbating the "you're only as strong as your weakest link" issue that plagues the game.
What it does is make it so that the best thing you can be doing on many maps is ganking the other team repeatedly, building a ~2 level lead, then riding that 2 level lead, because there isn't enough of a multiplier in place for the losing team, should they pick off members of the winning team. If you die to a team 2-3 levels behind, you should be punished for it. Notice how after a team wipe in the late game, the team behind is often still WAY far behind the other team. That massive relative value to those early ganks builds in these enormous cushions that can sustain a lead even through that sort of thing.
This is being exacerbated by another change made in the Sylvanas patch- they lengthened the time you spend 1=10, and lessened the time you spend 10-20. This means that if you get a 2 level lead from 6-8 ganks early on, you are going to have ults while your opponents do not for a much longer period of time than before. You can see this issue on TSQ, where they have intentionally decreased the amount of experience minion waves give, and a 8-10 difference quickly turns into 9.12.
This leads to the big issue in how this affects the "Team Brawler" game on many maps- the map objectives are now becoming secondary in importance to the gank cushion. Tomb is the obvious offender- but Battlefield of Eternity is the biggest. The map objective takes forever to kill. Splt pushing doesn't work well because the map is gigantic and you'll get murdered for it - only Abathur can get away with it. A few in chat were complaining that they can't figure out how to approach the map. I've won almost all of my recent games featuring competent players, with the exception of one, and the solution is simple- abuse the EXP now given for ganking.
The immortals have no HP. Losing early ones is not a big deal- you won't lose many structures, and when ganks give you as much EXP as a tower kill, you can afford the trade off when you burn it down by intentionally sacrificing your early ones.
Instead of fighting for your immortal early- do the opposite. Wait for them to come to your turf, filled with all sorts of ground hazards, then murder them when they're on top of it and caught off guard. When they rez? Do it again. Make sure not to die, and to keep your mana up- you don't need to go crazy, you just need to make the easy picks.
This will net you an EXP lead. They'll get the first 1-2 immortals since you won't have time to kill yours after they die unless you've got Gaz putting down turrets. That's ok, they have no HP and are easily dispatched. Then, you'll get that EXP lead- and because soaking is so difficult on this map, it will be very hard for them to recover.
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Post-10, you'll start being able to put damage on yours after you blow them up. When you do, split push, precisely because of the tp HP. You'll get more EXP,and you'll avoid a fight you don't want - the only way to lose is to repeatedly get killed by them.
This is what I think the optimal strat is for this map.
This is a very unhealthy for the game. The objective is largely irrelevant. The thing the game is telling players is important, is not actually important. The thing that makes this game special and distinct from other entries in the genre is becoming de-emphasized. In this strategy, the opposing team will win the immortal, think they're doing a good job, but really be far behind despite winning it. A similar issue arises in Haunted Mines- a team can get more skulls, have a huge golem, but if they get wiped as they're finishing the boss, the other team instantly gets a full level in EXP, negating most of the work that went into the objective.
These issues really need to be addressed. I get what they were, in theory, trying to do with extending the 1-10 time, but I feel it really worked against what you really want to be doing in the game in a number of ways. I'm not in a position to test this stuff to see its impact, but I think these things are worth trying-
Possible things to do to help-
1) De-emphasize kill EXP pre-10, re-emphasize PvE EXP at these levels. Make it so the important part of a kill is the denied soak, not the actual death. This allows teams to try and cover by using good rotations. It also re-emphasizes the importance of getting those towers down on your opponent's side.
2) Put some sort of accellerant in place when the first team hits 10 that tries to pull both teams upward at the same rate to reduce the time when one team has ults and the other doesn't.
3) Make the exp bonus bigger for kills from more than a level behind. There's already a modifier, but it doesn't seem big enough to account for the big advantage in stats the team ahead has. If you're out of position and get ganked at level 15 and they're level 12, you should be punished by more than a 30% EXP bonus for the kill.
In conclusion- this isn't out of hate or complaining, I just want to be having way more of the down to the buzzer games I had back in beta. Those are the sort of games that make things special - that feeling that everything's on a razor's edge, and one bad call late can blow up your game and lead to "6.5/10, no comeback mechanics!" spam in the chat. The current snowball setup is bad for players, bad for viewers, and ultimately, bad for the game's future. Here's hoping for a better one.
