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[Hemi-PoweredDrone]

I decided to try a Locust/Nest build for Abathur. I felt weak like 70% of the game until I started moving around and realised "oh, this shit pushes super fast." Symbiote build seems more fun, though.

 

[Alavard]

You know those retention issues we've had?

Arena seems like a great solution to a lot of them.

Should be good for attracting new players too, since the characters you can pick aren't limited to your hero collection or the free rotation.

 

[sturgboski]

Congrats to the champs!

*tableflip* of course the final match doesnt have mecha tassadar! damn it!

 

[Alur]

When Arena comes out I foresee spending a lot of time there.

It looks like it's finally going to be the mode where it's fun with friends, but it's also possible to have fun going in as a solo player for a quick game.

The one thing Overwatch has bigtime vs HOTS right now is that when you lose it isn't near as painful because you can carry or be carried + swap heroes to try and adapt.

Obviously neither are possible in HOTS, so alternate game modes can introduce more fun and less of the other stuff that makes some matches you play each night so damn brutal due to MM or comp or whatever.

 

[davepoobond]

Arena was a lot of fun. It's almost worth just dying because it is faster to respawn. There is no xp

 

[Dance Inferno]

The other that's nice about Overwatch is that if your team mega sucks then you're only in the match for 5 mins at most. I don't know what arena is like but if it's short games then it could be a great casual mode.

 

[patchday]

New Arena mode sounds very interesting! Looking forward to trying it out

Yeah Overwatch definitely allows player skill to shine. In HOTS, you have to shine more as a Team which can be difficult with random strangers

 

[Maledict]

I think it's a bit unfair to Dignitas to say the DK match was the real final. Dig took a game off cloud 9 in the early round which DK didn't manage to do, and Dig beat Navi hands down which again no-one was expecting.

Dig do seem to have an issue with whiffing in finals though - not sure if it's nerves or whatever, but their drafts go a bit crazy and they clearly aren't on their game. It's happened a few times now, so presume they just need more practice as a team and in that setting. They've managed to come a huge distance in a really short space of time so I have great expectations of them for the future.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Dig has often been inconsistent in their performance, both online and on lans. Dunno what it is. Bakery needs to expand his support catalogue, he's probably the best monk player in the west but he's depending on him a bit much. Don't think they could have won at peak performance though against C9's strats.

NaVi played worse yesterday though.

 

[Milly79]

Caffeine replied to me on Reddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthe...ers_cloud9_vs_team_dk_match_report_dat_murky/

T_T

"We did it for you"

I'm so fangirling right now

 

[Indignate]

Looking for queues at 5 in the morning is hard.

 

[questionmark]

Would you guys recommend any of the games aside from game 2 of C9 DK?

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

NaVi vs DK on Haunted Mines

 

[Ketch]

Also dig YL on BoE

 

[Alur]

Was checking through players' Twitters and saw k1pro say he died 0 times during the finals.

Impressive as hell. Especially with all the flanking he does. So good.

 

[brian!]

holy shit the c9 vs. dk cheese was out of control

 

[Maledict]

Regarding the arena, does anyone else think that the lack of talents will be a real problem? some heroes are fine without talents (Jaina, Valla), whereas some are incredibly weak (Illidan, Kael). Wouldn't it be better to have heroes just come with a pre-loaded talent spec?

 

[Alur]

Pic of (I'm assuming) hero select screen for Arena from Solidjake's twitter:

Also grabbed this from the panel yesterday of the death recap screen:

 

[patchday]

Some things I feel would improve the game:

• Allow players to build talent tree before game. Also allow it to be tweaked dynamically if we need to
• Map voting. I LOVED all the vanilla maps but dont care for the two new ones much

Just simple little quality of life changes

Regarding the arena, does anyone else think that the lack of talents will be a real problem? some heroes are fine without talents (Jaina, Valla), whereas some are incredibly weak (Illidan, Kael). Wouldn't it be better to have heroes just come with a pre-loaded talent spec?

huh wonder how that will work

 

[questionmark]

Some things I feel would improve the game:

Allow players to build talent tree before game. Also allow it to be tweaked dynamically if we need to

I would consider this to be way too much effort for way too little benefit. Having to manually pick talents is a nonissue as far as I am concerned. There are more important things they need to work on, such as a map veto which I would prefer to a map voting system. They have talked about the possibility of reworking the map system once there are more maps. With Towers of Doom or whatever it's called being added, I feel like we're nearing that point.

 

[RumblingRosco]

So besides me (US-based) and Yoshichan (EU-based), who else do we have that'll have access to Cho'Gall?

 

[Quesa]

Do I still get artanis if I preorder legacy of the void?

 

[kirblar]

Do I still get artanis if I preorder legacy of the void?

Definitely. Open a support ticket w/ a screenshot of the preorder if you do it at Best Buy/Amazon.

 

[Quesa]

Definitely. Open a support ticket w/ a screenshot of the preorder if you do it at Best Buy/Amazon.

I'm planning on just doing it via battlenet. Anything I have to do then?

 

[mercviper]

I'm planning on just doing it via battlenet. Anything I have to do then?

Nope. He will just show up as available

 

[Quesa]

Just pre-ordered, got 'em. Thanks!

 

[Milly79]

So besides me (US-based) and Yoshichan (EU-based), who else do we have that'll have access to Cho'Gall?

Keyes, Proto (US)

Please note I'm not signing them up to spread him

 

[Alur]

I will be glad to spread Cho'Gall to any NA players who have 3k MMR or better. Kappa

huehue

Nah, really, anyone that wants it on NA I can probably help ya out. Then maybe one of you can help me get it on my smurf accounts.

 

[Ketch]

Giant killer is gonna be gross vs chogall

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Spectral Leech is gonna be dope

 

[Valus]

anyone have a link to the C9 murky game? Missed it.

 

[Brawndo Addict]

I just can't imagine a middle-ground where Cho'Gall is not severely underpowered or severely overpowered. The hero concept is just so intrinsically opposed to the way the game works; heroes like Murky/Abathur have to make up for their decreased hero presence by getting an XP advantage close to what another hero would be worth through their unique mechanics. I don't see how Cho'Gall is going to get double XP or something like that to make up for the loss of another hero unless his double abilities are so powerful together that he ends up being able to solo enemy heroes. And that's not good either because it means that even if you double up on him he can easily pick you off one by one.

 

[kirblar]

He can easily blow you up 1 v 1. That's by design- treat him like he's two people.

CC is hyper-effective against him, Anub'Arak especially.

 

[Brawndo Addict]

The concern I have is that "Cho'Gall <> Hero" will be like "Hero <> Murky/Lost Viking". The power differential with the latter is balanced by lowered death experience/impact (Murky respawns fast, other lost Vikings to control). But with Cho'Gall, he picks off one hero and not only do you suffer the consequences of a normal hero death, but it also means that your second hero in the lane can't risk contesting anymore lest they get blown up too. So a second hero in the lane isn't worth much if it doesn't actually impede Cho'Gall from killing you (like sending a second Viking to a lane).

If you have to play uber-defensive against him, you'll probably just want to send your second hero somewhere else to actually gain an advantage and consider the lane lost since Cho'Gall will just end up outpoking/trading you to death anyway.

 

[kirblar]

If you kill Cho'Gall, you get double EXP and cripple their team. You just need to avoid 1v1 engagements at all costs because it's really a 2v1. It's just like dealing with 2 people buddied up.

 

[RumblingRosco]

I feel like Cho'Gall will be able to easily one-shot Murky and Erik (and maybe Baelog). It'll be fun to see just how beefy Cho'Gall really is. He's been my most-wanted Blizzard-universe character to be turned into a hero, so I'm psyched.

 

[Milly79]

They're all very fun, but play very differently.

Greymane for example, kind of plays like Butcher. If you want to go in for the melee burst kill, you need to wait and time it correctly. If you just engage with it, you'll get burst down pretty fast. You really need to poke in human form and finish with worgen form.

Lunara is very much about poking and dwindling away enemy health. Like they mentioned in the panel, you need to be attacking everyone and spreading your poison, as its the basis to all your skills and talents. For everyone poisoned, you can heal yourself, or increase attack speed, etc. With her increased constant movement speed, you can pretty much chase and poke and kite everyone constantly.

Cho'Gall is actually a ton of fun, even more so if you play with a friend on a mic. Timing attacks and face rolling 2/3 vs 1 is such an awesome feeling. He definitely needs some nerfs as he was super strong.

.

 

[Shahadan]

Is Cho'gall something that hasn't been done in a moba yet? I'm not super familiar with other games

 

[kirblar]

Is Cho'gall something that hasn't been done in a moba yet? I'm not super familiar with other games

Completely unique to HOTS- the Archon mode stuff for SC2 likely led to this being possible.

 

[TDLink]

I like that HOTS is doing unique stuff with MOBA character design. Lost Vikings, Abathur, Cho'Gall. It's really cool and I hope they continue it.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

It's the one thing that makes HoTS really stand out.

Wonder why Lunara is an assassin when Nazeebo is a specialist

 

[Ketch]

Completely unique to HOTS- the Archon mode stuff for SC2 likely led to this being possible.

How so?

 

[Brawndo Addict]

Don't get me wrong, I think literally having two players control Cho'Gall is hilarious and awesome. I love that HOTS is a space that allows for these kind of quirky hero designs. But this particular design challenge (2 in 1) is extremely hard to make viable/competitive because the sum ends up being greater/lesser than the whole of its parts.

 

[Ketch]

It's not even out yet

 

[kirblar]

How so?

They've said that the two teams are independent, but that when something's developed for SC2 or HOTS, its very easy to put it into the other game w/ little effort since they're on the same engine. Archon's been coming for a long time, so they likely just C/P'd what they were doing w/ that into this in order to get the hero to work correctly.

 

[Ketch]

I don't know if it's necessarily fair to say it's very easy to put something from one game into the other just because they're on the same engine. So many games run on the unreal, unity, source... would you automatically assume it would be easy to copy something from Half life to Dota?


Besides, dont you think that Chogall is basically just abathur symbiote tech adapted (get it? adapted) to new hero?

 

[kirblar]

I don't know if it's necessarily fair to say it's very easy to put something from one game into the other just because they're on the same engine. So many games run on the unreal, unity, source... would you automatically assume it would be easy to copy something from Half life to Dota?

Besides, dont you think that Chogall is basically just abathur symbiote tech adapted (get it? adapted) to new hero?

They've literally said that themselves- I'm not putting words into their mouths.

It might be that simple- but some of the mechanical stuff (the E, shared stats) might not.

 

[Orochinagis]

Is Cho'gall something that hasn't been done in a moba yet? I'm not super familiar with other games

Never seen a Heroe like that in LoL, maybe Kinded but its more a sinergy skill heroe and the other heroe is more like a IA.

 

[Ketch]

They've literally said that themselves- I'm not putting words into their mouths.

It might be that simple- but some of the mechanical stuff (the E, shared stats) might not.

What does any of that stuff have to do with archon mode though? I thought archon mode was just like coop starcraft (macro/micro mod if you're familiar), are their super units and stuff in there too?

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

They've said that the two teams are independent, but that when something's developed for SC2 or HOTS, its very easy to put it into the other game w/ little effort since they're on the same engine. Archon's been coming for a long time, so they likely just C/P'd what they were doing w/ that into this in order to get the hero to work correctly.

Didn't they just say at Blizzcon that it's the same team now?