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Heroes of the Storm |OT| Pretty sure that Abathur is AFK

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P

patchday

Member
wasnt aware Nova was that much of a threat. But maybe its because of the characters I tend to play which either has some sort of escape or tank. Yeah if you're that vulnerable just stick with your teammates like glue or stay near towers. You can also just flee when you see the 'shimmer' or whatever they call it
 
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Strider

Member
Just delete Nova from the game...

But seriously stealthed assassins don't fit into HotS very well IMO. There's no way to counter them with items so you just have to pray you have a hero that can counter them in QM...

I played 2 games with a Nova last night. One I had on my team had 0 kills. Z e r o... And since Nova offers literally nothing else we got steamrolled.

Then I queue again and the enemy team has a Nova and my team has 1 assassin, Kael'Thas. Nova has a fucking field day blowing him up all game and we're left without an assassin every single fight. Got steamrolled again.

I'm a big believer in Mobas that if you deserve to rank up/climb mmr and win games that you will do so... But I didn't feel like anything I did in either of these games mattered. The game was solely in the hands of the Nova player. It's no fun.

I suck at HotS anyway tho so whatever.
 
S

Strider

Member
Got the play 8 games and Assassin quests the day Lunara comes out
1.0
 
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TxdoHawk

Member
Had my first intentional feeder in HoTS ever, an enemy Leoric who just stood between our first and second forts, let us endlessly kill him. I eventually just left him alone, even though he was slowly auto-attacking our one fort.

I've been playing since Alpha, surprised it took this long. Stunk, since even though we won, the victory felt super hollow. (I reported him of course.)

brian! said:
Ive had a couple of intentional feeding enemy teams since ive started these smurf accounts, no access to enemy chat but they seemed prtty chill we had dance parties
Click to expand...

Lordy. Low MMR QM must be an absolute wasteland right now. Blizzard should really have an alternate unlock path if you are 40.
 
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brian!

Member
Ive had a couple of intentional feeding enemy teams since ive started these smurf accounts, no access to enemy chat but they seemed prtty chill we had dance parties
 
A

Alur

Member
Strider said:
Got the play 8 games and Assassin quests the day Lunara comes out
1.0
Click to expand...

Your body is ready. Now your client is too.

brian! said:
Ive had a couple of intentional feeding enemy teams since ive started these smurf accounts, no access to enemy chat but they seemed prtty chill we had dance parties
Click to expand...

You're smurfing in QM for the mount, right?

That's the kind of thing I was talking about in our many discussions about MMR hell. You almost never see that stuff at about ~2600+. When I've smurfed or played at that level it felt like every third game. Just frustrating when you're on the team that does it and you can't do anything to change it.
 
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brian!

Member
Yeah it was more of a the whole team decided they couldnt win so they fooled around, i can only imagine what their chat was like tho

Ive been playing w/ a higher rated person tho so the last one i finished was ~3000 and ive pretty much been getting other smurfs in my games every time, actually had one of the more even games in memory last night on a smurf, was pretty tough lol
 
M

Maledict

Member
There's a time limited Cloud9 mount now available, and only purchasable with gold. Goes from the shop in February. Milly will be in heaven!
 
A

Alur

Member
Maledict said:
There's a time limited Cloud9 mount now available, and only purchasable with gold. Goes from the shop in February. Milly will be in heaven!
Click to expand...

HOLY SHIT.

ME TOO. ME TOO. This is what I was begging them for. C9 Portraits and skins a-la League...I'm not even a C9 homer, but I got dat gold. Goin get it.

Do we have a pic of the mount?
 
A

Alur

Member
This is interesting:

December Patch Notes said:
Loading Screens

Portrait Border Display

Loading Screens will now only display portrait borders that are relevant to each play mode. Each loading screen will display portrait borders as follows:

Quick Match, Custom Games, and Versus A.I. - Basic border and account level.

Hero League - Hero League rank.

Team League - Team League rank.

Party Indicator Icons

New Loading Screen icons have been added to indicate which players queued together as a party.

Players in the same party will appear next to each other on loading screens.

Parties will be separated by icon color so that it is easier to see how many parties there are, and how many players are in each.
Click to expand...

I know there was someone here in the thread upset about how HL rank and account levels were being shown in QM games and putting people on tilt.

Now you don't have to worry about seeing folks HL rank except for when they queue in HL. On the downside, you can't hide your account level either.
 
B

brian!

Member
Ive only played him in ai but i was pretty fixated on his q being a problem haha

I just got dat chogall money last night and was considering dropping 15k on lunara but i might just get thrall instead

Pretty hype for incoming chogall changes too, i like playing him a lot

Also leoric w fixed!
Wondering what they mean by cho w not healing off "certain" buildings now
 
A

Alur

Member
Oh shit. kirblar, did you see this?

December Patch Notes said:
Matchmaking

A new Warrior rule has been added to Quick Match that now prevents teams that do not have a Warrior hero from being matched with teams that do have a Warrior.
Click to expand...

That's a big change. And a fucking welcome one too. I don't care what their numbers said.
 
K

KillerDark

Member
Pretty excited to see the Artanis buffs in action, I enjoy playing as him a lot, the buff to his e is huge. Also very excited about the new QM warrior rule, should make QM much better.
 
K

kirblar

Member
Yeah, I think that's more to prevent the 0 warrior vs 2 warrior situation that would just killify the 2-warrior team than anything else.
 
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brian!

Member
Another my warrior isnt the same kind of warrior as theirs situation tho

Incoming revamp to sonya that makes her more tanky and less dmg in a couple of months
 
Yoshichan

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
I don't recall ever seeing any of those
 
A

Alur

Member
Eager to see them, even if they have an unspecified date. He's one of my favorite heroes.

AND BLIZZ WHERE IS MY VIDEO/IMAGE/ETC OF THIS C9 MOUNT. C'MON BREHS I'M DYIN OF THIRST OVER HERE.
 
davepoobond

davepoobond

you can't put a price on sparks
Space Lord sounds funny. Guessing, but maybe its going to be something like Skeletor or (less likely) Mumra or something
 
A

Alur

Member
I bought Kharazim's master since it was my second time getting him to 10. Despite that, still got 50k gold even without playing for nearly three weeks.

Bring on the gold sinks.
 
I

Indignate

Member
Wait, the Jaina winter skin is still not available alone? Ain't that some shit.

Blizzard also the first company to make me dislike a winter themed skin with that Sylvanus one.

Lunara doe so all is forgiven.
 
V

Valus

Member
Lol when I started the game for a split section it showed Greymane's backside in wolf form before refreshing to Lunara's background. Can't wait till he's released.

Lunara is half off.
 
A

Alur

Member
At least Sylvanas' new skin has themed abilities so she isn't just throwing poison everywhere.

It looks better in game than I thought it did in the video too.
 
K

kirblar

Member
Matchmaking improvements part 1 is Live
Matchmaking Improvements: Phase One
Spyrian 12/15/2015
0

When Heroes of the Storm matchmaking was originally implemented, it was based on the system we used for StarCraft II. This works great for a game that’s primarily centered on 1v1 play, and StarCraft II matchmaking has historically been pretty solid. However, Heroes is team-based, and we had to create several rules, such as team composition and party size restrictions, to help tailor this system to a 5v5 game. The more rules that we added, the more difficult it became for the matchmaker to put together high-quality games. While the majority of games that the previous matchmaker put together were reasonably fair, the system still wasn’t quite hitting the mark as often as we had hoped.

At BlizzCon, we spoke about our plan to refactor the Heroes of the Storm matchmaker by the end of the year, and discussed many of the changes this would include. Over the past couple of months, we’ve worked to completely rework the matchmaker in order to bring you a brand new system built specifically for Heroes of the Storm. We’ve seen very positive results after running extensive internal simulations on the new system, and we’re thrilled to let you know that we’ve already brought the initial version of the new match builder to the live version of Heroes of the Storm! Now that the new system is in place, we’d like to walk you through some of the major changes we’ve implemented so far.

Divider_SkyShapes.png
Creating High Quality Matches

During our investigation, we dove deep into the heart of the Heroes matchmaker to study extensive live data gathered from all possible matchmaking scenarios. We emerged with a much better understanding about why the system was underperforming in some areas, and what improvements we needed to make. We then set about making changes, with our primary focus set squarely on creating a new system that will consistently provide you with evenly matched games, in which both teams have an equal chance to win.

As a result of these changes, the Heroes matchmaker will now much more effectively group you with allies and opponents that have very similar matchmaking ratings (MMR) to your own, creating games that are fair for both sides. This will also affect Ranked play, and you may notice that all players in your Hero and Team League games are much closer in terms of Ranking. While initial data from live games indicates that we’re well on our way to accomplishing these goals, we’re going to continue monitoring the new system and make additional improvements as necessary.

Divider_SkyShapes.png
Queues and Wait Times

The previous matchmaking system would work to immediately put a game together once a player’s wait time in queue reached the ten-minute mark —whether or not the players it selected for that game were equally skilled.

Rather than trying to get you into a match as soon as possible after a certain time has elapsed, the new matchmaking system’s primary focus is to give you the most evenly matched games that it can. If a close game cannot be created, you may be held in the queue a little longer until other players with similar MMRs are found, and a quality game can be formed. What’s more, the matchmaker will now give higher priority to those who have been waiting the longest in queue. This means that you may end up waiting a little longer for a game from time to time, but you’ll have a better match as a result.

Additionally, if the matchmaker believes your wait time will be excessive, it may expand its search to include players who are slightly above, or slightly below, your matchmaking rating. This will help the system find you a match more quickly, while still working to create a relatively even game for everyone it brings together.

It is important to note that these situations are unlikely to affect most players, but may occur for those at the extreme ends of the MMR spectrum when searching for a match during off-peak queue times.

Divider_SkyShapes.png
Matchmaking Changes for Parties

The previous matchmaker would try to always match groups of players according to party size. This could become detrimental if a party of similar size and skill could not be found, because the matchmaker would then pull in an opposing party that may have matched in size, but didn’t necessarily measure up in terms of MMR. While new matchmaker will continue to match parties of equal size against one another, we’ve placed additional emphasis on matching teams of similar skill. This means that you may occasionally encounter party size differences between your team and your opponents, but the match you receive will be much higher quality.

To add to this, matchmaking will now also take a party’s ability to more effectively coordinate as a team into account when creating games. This means that if you queue alone and get matched against a party, that party will likely be of lower average skill than your team of solo players, which should help to balance out your opponents’ communication advantage.

Finally, the new matchmaker is capable of relaxing its standard team composition rules to help parties with unusual hero makeups —such as four specialists— more easily find a good match. In some cases, the matchmaker may even attempt to match two parties with unusual team compositions against one another. However, these situations will only arise if the resulting game will be a high-quality match in terms of skill.

Divider_SkyShapes.png
Loading Screen Changes

Loading screens may not have anything to do with matchmaking, but they do directly communicate who you’re matched with and against before every game you play. Despite this, we found that loading screens could do a better job communicating this information and decided to make a few adjustments.

Our first change to loading screens focuses on players’ portrait borders, which will now always match the game mode that they are loading into. This means that in Hero League games, you will only see players’ Hero League borders and ranks on loading screens. In Quick Match games, you will only see basic portrait borders and player levels. This should help reduce situations where players could conceal their Hero League rank, for example, behind their player level or Team League rank.

We’ve also added new party icons to loading screens that will indicate which players are partied together, and how many parties are in a game. Despite this first phase of matchmaking improvements, it’s still possible for new or low MMR players to be mixed in with veteran or high MMR players by partying up together. With this change to loading screens, it should now be easier to understand how a low-rated player managed to find their way into your game.

Divider_SkyShapes.png
Known Challenges and Future Improvements

In addition to keeping an eye on the changes we’ve made with this first phase of matchmaking improvements, we're looking forward to working on other areas going forward.

Matching Veterans and New Players
We’ve reduced the likelihood that new players will be matched with or against veteran players, but we’d still like to make further changes in this area with future updates.
Mixing High and Low MMR Players
We’ve reduced the likelihood that high and low rated players will be matched in the same games, though our first round of improvements isn’t perfect, we believe we’re on the right track. As mentioned above, it’s also still possible for this to occur when high and low MMR players queue together in parties.
Additionally, we’re planning to work on improving the accuracy of matchmaking ratings as a whole so that the matchmaker’s estimations of players’ skill levels are even more precise.
Quick Match Team Compositions
We’ve just added a new rule for Warriors in the Quick Match queue. This functions much like the Support rule that came before it, in that teams without a Warrior hero will no longer be matched against teams that do have a Warrior. Keep in mind, however, that this rule can still be broken by players in full parties.
We still have more work we’d like to do to limit unfavorable team compositions in Quick Match. For example, we’d like to limit the likelihood that one team will receive multiple “special” heroes, such as Cho’gall, Abathur, and Nova, in a future update.
Queue times
While queue times have increased as a result of our latest matchmaking changes, the number of quality matches we’re seeing has also increased. We’re going to work toward bringing queue times down, but our primary focus is going to stay centered on providing high-quality matches, and we don’t want to sacrifice good games for shorter wait times. We’ll keep you updated as we make progress toward this goal.
Matching with Blocked Players
We have heard your feedback that it’s not fun to be matched with players that you’ve added to your Blocked Communication list, and while we agree, we haven’t yet addressed this. However, it is on our radar, and we hope to work toward a solution in the future.

Divider_SkyShapes.png

The matchmaking changes that we’ve implemented are still brand new, and none of the issues we’ve discussed here today are 100% resolved. This means that while match quality in general has improved quite a bit, it is still possible to receive an unfair game from time to time while we continue to work on further adjustments. It’s also possible that bugs in the new matchmaking system are yet to be discovered. If you happen to encounter any matchmaking issues, please head over to the official Heroes forums and let us know about your experience. Your reports will help us resolve bugs more quickly, as well as investigate unfair matches so that we can continue to strengthen the matchmaking system.

This is only the beginning of the changes we have in store for Heroes of the Storm matchmaking, and providing evenly matched games is still our highest priority. We’re going to keep monitoring data from live games, and will continue to make improvements with future updates. As always, thank you very much for your feedback on the matchmaking system over the past few months. We hope you’ll continue to share your thoughts with us going forward.
Click to expand...
 
B

brian!

Member
It should

Wonder what the mm changes mean for queue time w/ regard to ppl on the ends of the spectrum, it looks like theyve put a lot of work into this. Def prefer longer waits for more even matches, but i kind of wonder what that actually means, there are so many things that go towards defining an "even" match

Party icons might open up a can of worms
 
A

AbundantChoice

Member
Alur said:
Have we seen the Space Lord Leoric yet? Or that mount?
Click to expand...

Oh man, I know it's not this, but imagine if it was the glorious "light bulb suit" from the middle third of this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dscfeQOMuGw

Either way, I'm shouting out this song continually while playing in that skin no matter what it ends up looking like.

"Now give me the strength / to split the world in two
I ate all the rest / and now I gotta eat you
AWWWWWW SPACE LORD MOTHER@&#^ER"
 
A

Alur

Member
Hey you guys.

Blizzard is putting in work. Lots to do and lots to complain about, but even as a fanboy I am legit shook at how differently they've handled the turnaround and output on HOTS compared to previous titles.

Above and beyond what I expected.
Now finish matchmaking and give us Grandmaster and then we will find something else to needle you about.
 
R

RumblingRosco

Member
As you guys/gals maybe know, I really like Abathur. My theory is that every hero that is released that doesn't directly counter him is a subtle buff to Abathur, because it reduces the odds of someone playing a different hero that can counter Abathur. For example, Lunara isn't really a strong counter to Abathur, so by her existing in HOTS, fewer players will pick Nova.

Anyway, I now know how to set-up the bomb on Lunara.
 
B

brian!

Member
Watching dread's stream lunara waveclear looks pretty decent

Ppl in his chat saying the leap does give you unstoppable

She looks like shed be nasty w/ tass

He just called his sandwich a dreadwich so i guess i am forever a dreadnaught fan
 
J

jaundicejuice

Member
Her health regen based off of targets affected by her trait seems really strong. She's got decent sustain for teamfights, especially with her targeted poison wave ult. Each damage tick is a heal over time.
 
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