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[Alur]

That method will not work if you are queuing with others and they often get ORD1 - it'll just keep stalling out and your team will never get a game.

It will work if you solo queue and are willing to give it a go 2-5 times each time you queue (small price to pay honestly).

And yes, that is the solution in my eyes. I don't understand why there isn't an east coast server for this game. Right now we have a midwest server and a west coast server...yet the east coast (and the states that are often lumped into it) is the most populated side of the country. We could easily handle two east and west bare minimum IMO.

 

[kirblar]

That's so weird- I'm pretty sure Blizzard had/has servers in Northern Virginia for WoW.

 

[Alur]

Yeah I mean WoW had servers throughout the country for ages before the tech caught up (and population shifted) and they could merge them.

I don't know if they were just going conservative or what...but damn, come off some money bois and hook us up with legit servers for our areas.

 

[kirblar]

Yeah I mean WoW had servers throughout the country for ages before the tech caught up (and population shifted) and they could merge them.

I don't know if they were just going conservative or what...but damn, come off some money bois and hook us up with legit servers for our areas.

I get the feeling this is overperforming for them and they're now struggling to catch up.

 

[Turdburger]

Blizzard is showing that their design philosophy is centered around achieving at least some sort of talent parity on each tier. Through all of these revamps, it's obvious that they're highly focused on making sure that they're putting equal-power talents on the same tier, and improving the power of talents with each successive talent tier.

This is how it always should have been, and how it always should be. I remember pining for this in this thread months ago and having a few people argue with me about it, but talent parity should be the top priority for Blizzard because the talent tree system is a major part of what makes HOTS unique from other MOBAs and is the only functional character customization feature in the game to replace items.

There will always be go-to talents in the competitive scene for certain heroes on certain tiers, and that is unavoidable. However, creating at least some parity on each tier for each hero is not a difficult goal and should be attainable.

Heroes like Vikings and Kael'Thas are incredibly broken in design. The Vikings' soak effect was too powerful, in part because of the respawn timer. However, teams were getting both the soak potential and the insane teamfight presence in the same hero, which is absolutely absurd. The Vikings could put out top-tier teamfight damage, be incredibly hard to kill, and soak 3 lanes at once. Completely broken.

Spin to Win, Jump, and NF gave them damage and ridiculous survivability starting at level 7 with Jump. And given how impactful these talents are, they became complete must-haves, eliminating all talent parity on their respective tiers.

Kaeyoh is just a butthurt Vikings player that is sad that one of his favorite and most effective heroes is getting what amounts to a nerf; however, it is simply a much-needed fundamental re-design that unfortunately reduces their competitive effectiveness. Don't let yourselves be fooled: Kaeyoh doesn't give a single shit about the overall design fundamentals of the hero, he cares about the competitive effectiveness and skill cap of the hero. He has tens of thousands of dollars to gain from it, so of course his agenda makes sense. He should be a bit more transparent about it, however.

 

[kirblar]

Spin to Win, Jump, and NF gave them damage and ridiculous survivability starting at level 7 with Jump. And given how impactful these talents are, they became complete must-haves, eliminating all talent parity on their respective tiers.

This is the fundamental design flaw- gating Q/W/E makes those talents must-picks on any tier in which they appear.

This hypothetical "confused by Q/W/E player"? Lost Vikings are just not the hero for them- you don't need to dumb down every hero- you just don't want LV's complexity as the norm- they should be a high-end exception like Abathur.

 

[Turdburger]

Oh, I totally think they're screwing up royally when making large character overhauls and over-nerfing the heroes. Nazeebo's a really good example. But TLV are such an incredibly egregious issue on multiple fronts that a radical overhaul was necessary.

I don't disagree with this, but look at the origin of the nerf.

When a single talent is solely responsible for a hero being imba-tier, that talent needs to be nerfed in order to achieve talent parity. The problem with this is that if you don't buff the hero in other areas, their effectiveness suffers and they are replaced by other heroes.

Specialized Toxin was the sole reason for Nazeebo's insane power at the time. The problem wasn't even Ravenous itself, but the fact that Ravenous also put a DoT on everyone that fucked them even harder. They needed to bring Ravenous in line with Gargantuan to achieve some sort of parity at 10, and they needed to nerf Toxin because it was godlike at 16.

The problem is that made Nazeebo bad, and they didn't introduce any other buffs to the character to make him still somewhat viable. What this tells you is that they need to either buff his base kit, or buff the power of all talents on certain tiers to both (a) maintain talent parity across that tier and (b) buff the hero.

This is the problem we currently see with Kael'Thas and Ignite. Ignite is going to be changed, removed, or whatevered eventually. But will they buff other things about Kael when they nerf ignite in order to keep him viable?

 

[jaundicejuice]

Illinois is by a great lake and it's south of Ontario, I don't understand how that's considered the midwest. Whatever, HotS clearly does not have enough server clusters and that sounds like way too much of a pain in the ass to go through.

When I play Dota 2 I can select where I want to queue, I don't have to jump through any stupid hoops to play a game with a decent connection because they have servers in BC, Washington, Oregon and California. Valve simply has better infrastructure than Blizzard because of Steam and Dota 2 has more robust feature set than HotS. HotS should still be in open beta because it is missing too many quality of life features.

I vastly prefer Heroes of the Storm over Dota 2 because it's more casual and matches are simply faster overall but Blizzard has got some serious work to do and I'm not talking content creation.

 

[Pooya]

I can't comment for TLV, but you are flat out wrong on Sylvanas. She's currently one of the most dominant heroes in the game, and her skill shot did WAY too much damage considering it was a ranged silence. They have systematically removed damage from big CC abilities from all other heroes, it was an oddity hers did that much to begin with. And she will still be one of the best and highest picked heroes in the game after these changes.

And they patch every 6 to 7 weeks or so, and have been far more upfront about what they are doing and why compared to any of their other games. Have you been playing long?

they patch often cause the game just launched and was in beta , I'm not talking about frequency of patch releases per say but how changes are applied, patches weren't this major so far as to entirely change how a hero is played. TLV's trait is replaced with a level one talent...they could change it gradually with several patches and see what works, but no, everything had to dumped all at once, you have to re learn how to play now. That's how this horrible team killed StarCraft II with constant mis management and odd decisions. TLV had high win rate, sure it had to be changed but not to make them useless.

Sure arrow's damage was ok, it's ok now even reduced but unstable poison was the real threat combined with it and it was a situational damage requiring timing and skill, now it's all gone.

 

[patchday]

TLV is going from top tier to lowest tier there is.

that better not be true. I havent even tried them out yet. There is already a crapton of heroes that do not see playtime. Makes no sense to nerf the few heroes that people actually enjoyed playing.

Illinois is by a great lake and it's south of Ontario, I don't understand how that's considered the midwest. Whatever, HotS clearly does not have enough server clusters and that sounds like way too much of a pain in the ass to go through.

When I play Dota 2 I can select where I want to queue, I don't have to jump through any stupid hoops to play a game with a decent connection because they have servers in BC, Washington, Oregon and California. Valve simply has better infrastructure than Blizzard because of Steam and Dota 2 has more robust feature set than HotS. HotS should still be in open beta because it is missing too many quality of life features.

I vastly prefer Heroes of the Storm over Dota 2 because it's more casual and matches are simply faster overall but Blizzard has got some serious work to do and I'm not talking content creation.

You played Dota 2 reborn yet? They added some new modes. Hopefully they are a lot less time demanding then the normal mode.

 

[tylerf]

Leveling is an insane grind now that all the launch event/new account boosts are over. I bet they sell so many stim packs this week.

 

[kirblar]

that better not be true. I havent even tried them out yet. There is already a crapton of heroes that do not see playtime. Makes no sense to nerf the few heroes that people actually enjoyed playing.

60% winrate. It had to be done.

 

[jaundicejuice]

You played Dota 2 reborn yet? They added some new modes. Hopefully they are a lot less time demanding then the normal mode.

I'm re-installing Dota 2 right now and am going to opt in to the Reborn beta.

 

[Turdburger]

Sure arrow's damage was ok, it's ok now even reduced but unstable poison was the real threat combined with it and it was a situational damage requiring timing and skill, now it's all gone.

Arrow does 80 less damage at level 10, and randomly hitting someone with 7 instances of unstable poison is a complete fluke and an utterly unnecessary potential.

 

[Turdburger]

60% winrate. It had to be done.

Yep. If it turns out that they're so god awful that they're unplayable, they can now at least safely buff certain aspects to bring them back into line now that the design fundamentals of the hero are hopefully a bit more solid.

As an example they should make sonya's whirlwind unstoppable. Yes it would be OP as shit, but you know what else is OP as shit? Void prison, and flamestrike, Vikings and sylvanas in general. Every hero should be that way. That's what they should be doing in patches.

Hahahahahahahaha oh Ketch. FailFish

 

[Ketch]

It may "feel bad" to you that things get taken away- but that's how this works. It has to work this way- no matter if the game is SF, MTG, HOTS, or anything else. The same terrible "ALL BUFFS NO NERFS" plea comes out, and each time the developers know to ignore it, because it's a delusional fantasy by those who are simply averse to negative change.

You're not understanding my argument. It's not about all buffs and no nerfs or this making me feel bad or something... It's the way they're going about it that I think is stupid.

Take anubarak for example, the buffs they made to him were fucking great. They took what he does and made it actually good. It's what they should have done six months ago. If they had fixed anubarak before they nerfed the shit out of Chen, arthas, stitches, etc, and Diablo Then the balance of warriors would be in a way better spot then it is right now. And if it was still unbalanced it would be easier and more efficient to fix now that anubarak wasn't a broken piece of shit. The end result is another good hero in the game sooner and the balance is just the same or better.

Now Here's a theoretical: They spend a bunch of time reworking vikings and they lose something interesting about them in the process (this is debatable I know). And then some months from now they finally spend some time on gazlowe and he's all of a sudden just as good as vikings used to be. Now they should tune vikings up to be comptetive again? When if they had just reworked gazlowe instead of vikings to begin with then they would save a bunch of time and have gazlowe up and running sooner.

I don't dislike these changes because I'm adverse to negative change, I dislike them because they've done the same shit like three times now and it's proven to be bad.

 

[Maledict]

they patch often cause the game just launched and was in beta , I'm not talking about frequency of patch releases per say but how changes are applied, patches weren't this major so far as to entirely change how a hero is played. TLV's trait is replaced with a level one talent...they could change it gradually with several patches and see what works, but no, everything had to dumped all at once, you have to re learn how to play now. That's how this horrible team killed StarCraft II with constant mis management and odd decisions. TLV had high win rate, sure it had to be changed but not to make them useless.

Sure arrow's damage was ok, it's ok now even reduced but unstable poison was the real threat combined with it and it was a situational damage requiring timing and skill, now it's all gone.

This game isn't starcraft 2. All MOBAs do this, it's a fundamental part of how they balance themselves. You cannot, ever, achieve complete parity across your heroes - some will always be tier 1, some will always be bottom tier. Heroes will get buffed to be amazing, heroes will get nerfed and drop out of competitive play. That's the story of ever moba, and indeed any competeive game with this many moving parts.

And throwing your dagger on anything nearbye then launching an arrow wasn't exactly a high skill barrier. They don't like uncounterable, instant kill chain effects so it gets nerfed in the same way Kaels chain bomb did. Unstable poison will still be a common pick at that tier simply because of how amazing it is for wave clearing.

And um, patches have been this frequent roughly going back to alpha, and they have frequently completely changed how heores play. Be it Tyrael's cast aside, Thralls complete talent shifting, ETC and Diablo getting multiple new talents at every tier - that's what they do. I don't expect we'll see the design teams stop doing it until the game eventually shuts down way in the future.

 

[kirblar]

Chen hasn't changed in a while - he was seeing play a patch or two ago. The issue with the warriors is a lot more mundane- their stats formula for Warriors is wrong. Each time they rework (or just straight nerf in the case of stitches) a warrior, they wind up with less HP and less damage than they had before, and its now a massive pattern that indicates something is very wrong on their end with how they're handling them as a class.

Anub quality of life fixes that fixed the character and had him doing near-assassin level damage, which isn't really ideal. The big issue with Anub was that he was a pubstomper BEFORE they fixed him - his winrate was always bizarrely high relative to how far he fell off in competitive play. Now he's a super pubstomper, which doesn't bode well for his future in competitive play (see: Thrall, Nova). I really, really like playing as him too.

They're clearly fucking up left and right - but they're fucking up while making other, positive changes for the overall game. They definitely do need to communicate more on their thoughts- because the silence about the low tier bros and gals is deafening.

 

[Yoshichan]

Shit day for Heroes today. This game can really suck ass sometimes.

 

[Pooya]

Do we have any data on how often TLV was picked too? sure they had high win rate but you don't normally see them either. Maybe high rank ladder but rarely ever in qm for example. They had to be nerfed but not this much...

Arrow does 80 less damage at level 10, and randomly hitting someone with 7 instances of unstable poison is a complete fluke and an utterly unnecessary potential.

It was so fun though. that's what I'm saying, how often something like that can possibly happen? So when it happens it feels rewarding, I feel that's good fun design, it's not a game breaker or op but it was a nice little perk.

 

[Maledict]

I have to be honest, given the numbers for Sylvanas at the very top level, I expected more nerfs for her. I suspect they will be in the next patch, as they seem to prefer giving the environment a little while to react before NErfing something unless it's utterly out of line like Kaels chain bomb thing.

 

[Turdburger]

Chen hasn't changed in a while - he was seeing play a patch or two ago. The issue with the warriors is a lot more mundane- their stats formula for Warriors is wrong. Each time they rework (or just straight nerf in the case of stitches) a warrior, they wind up with less HP and less damage than they had before, and its now a massive pattern that indicates something is very wrong on their end with how they're handling them as a class.

Anub quality of life fixes that fixed the character and had him doing near-assassin level damage, which isn't really ideal. The big issue with Anub was that he was a pubstomper BEFORE they fixed him - his winrate was always bizarrely high relative to how far he fell off in competitive play. Now he's a super pubstomper, which doesn't bode well for his future in competitive play (see: Thrall, Nova). I really, really like playing as him too.

They're clearly fucking up left and right - but they're fucking up while making other, positive changes for the overall game. They definitely do need to communicate more on their thoughts- because the silence about the low tier bros and gals is deafening.

Chen got play on Cursed because that map revolves around the golems but that was sort of his only gimmick. Definitely a weak hero even before that, then they reworked him and he was worse. The talent parity probably improved but his overall effectiveness was lowered. This is a trade-off that Blizzard needs to become more aware of and attempt to avoid.

The only nerf that really pisses me off is Arthas. They could have just removed Envenom to remove the early game cheese and perhaps dialed back the ghouls by like 5%. Instead they rekt the whole hero. Kind of unnecessary, but it is true that at the time all we were seeing was Arthas/Stitches. For literally months.

 

[kirblar]

Chen got play on Cursed because that map revolves around the golems but that was sort of his only gimmick. Definitely a weak hero even before that, then they reworked him and he was worse. The talent parity probably improved but his overall effectiveness was lowered. This is a trade-off that Blizzard needs to become more aware of and attempt to avoid.

The only nerf that really pisses me off is Arthas. They could have just removed Envenom to remove the early game cheese and perhaps dialed back the ghouls by like 5%. Instead they rekt the whole hero. Kind of unnecessary, but it is true that at the time all we were seeing was Arthas/Stitches. For literally months.

I miss them.

They misunderstood those two enormously - any stationary tank like those two needs a beefy HP pool. Doesn't have to be Jo-level, but when you don't have mobility, you've got to account for face tanking.

 

[Pooya]

I feel Blizzard doesn't want people to play Sylvanas like an assassin she was but another boring specialist and lane pusher. Build variety is good and all but that possession is still useless, people are going to play her like an assassin still, she's just not going be as good or fun as before. Still good though but definitely less fun.

If someone really wants to play a lane pusher, others are so much better like Azmodan. Sylvanas is not a very good 'specialist', she was a good assassin, probably should have been one.

 

[jaundicejuice]

Hahahahahahahaha oh Ketch. FailFish

Juggernaut's Blade Fury is the same attack as Sonya's Whirlwind. He's magic immune and can only be right-clicked.

 

[Turdburger]

Juggernaut's Blade Fury is the same attack as Sonya's Whirlwind. He's magic immune and can only be right-clicked.

Don't get me wrong I agree with the idea

It's just funny because of his crush on Sonya

I feel Blizzard doesn't want people to play Sylvanas like an assassin she was but another boring specialist and lane pusher. Build variety is good and all but that possession is still useless, people are going to play her like an assassin still, she's just not going be as good or fun as before. Still good though but definitely less fun.

If someone really wants to play a lane pusher, others are so much better like Azmodan. Sylvanas is not a very good 'specialist', she was a good assassin, probably should have been one.

What in the world are they changing that makes you think this?

They reduced Wailing Arrows damage by like 25%. She's still going to be a top tier assassin

 

[Ketch]

I think sylvanas is a really good example of the kind of balance changes I'm talking about. Like I think they're correct to fix possession first before spending that time overhauling the rest of her. and in the mean time they're still able to make balance changes to wailing arrow and black arrow.

Compare that to the complete non-changes they made to play it again on vikings combined with the types of changes they made to boat (change the mechanic instead of tweaking the numbers).

To me that feels like two exact opposite approaches.

It's like there's two different balance teams, or they're lacking a strong lead balancer guy.

 

[Llyranor]

Playing as Nova against an enemy Murky is so hilarious. Unlimited Triple Taps!

 

[Milly79]

Don't worry Ketch, I love Sonya too.

 

[patchday]

I'm re-installing Dota 2 right now and am going to opt in to the Reborn beta.

Yeah I just completed an Overthrow match it was very brief.

 

[Kioshen]

Has this worked? I've stopped playing HotS because I keep getting placed on ORD1 for the majority of my matches and am experiencing ping spikes into the thousands. The game is completely unplayable.

Edit: Wait, what the fuck, ORD1 is in Chicago? If I live in the Pacific Northwest why am I getting placed on a server that far out east? Blizzard needs more server clusters if they're going to compete with Riot and Valve. At the very least provide players with the option to choose if the only want to play on US West or US East. I would gladly accept longer queue times if it meant a better connection overall.

Yeah I didn't try it because it will only work on solo queue and then you have to retry connecting until it puts you in another server. Kinda defeats the purpose really.

 

[Ketch]

Yeah I just completed an Overthrow match it was very brief.

wait... what is this? does DOTA have a mode that only lasts like 20 minutes now? I would be down for that.

 

[patchday]

wait... what is this? does DOTA have a mode that only lasts like 20 minutes now? I would be down for that.

yeah in the dota 2 reborn beta there is a bunch of custom game modes. I've been learning heroes in Overthrow since its a straight forward Arena. Matches are 12 mins or something. However, its not the traditional 'dota' map with 3 lanes. just a simple map where you hoard gold and kill others

 

[Ketch]

yeah in the dota 2 reborn beta there is a bunch of custom game modes. I've been learning heroes in Overthrow since its a straight forward Arena. Matches are 12 mins or something. However, its not the traditional 'dota' map with 3 lanes. just a simple map where you hoard gold and kill others

=/

Dota 1 had like "easy" mode which is basically the same game but like double the gold and xp gains and some other changes to make matches over much sooner

 

[Indignate]

=/

Dota 1 had like "easy" mode which is basically the same game but like double the gold and xp gains and some other changes to make matches over much sooner

Who is the easy mode for cuz that sounds like it just makes it way easier for someone who is good to snowball.

 

[Ketch]

Who is the easy mode for cuz that sounds like it just makes it way easier for someone who is good to snowball.

people with limited time to play

 

[Milly79]

Yesssssss

We will enable this 100% XP Bonus for the Americas region of Battle.net, starting at 1:00 p.m. PDT on Thursday, July 2, and ending at 1:00 p.m. PDT on Monday, July 6.

 

[Dice]

Freedom XP bonus. RIP Yoshichan.

 

[Ketch]

more XP? thats great.

let freedom ring

 

[Alur]

Now EU truly knows they lack the freedom.

 

[Ketch]

Is there bonus imperial xp?

No, there's not.

 

[questionmark]

Typical fat uncultured Americans being ignorant. Hate to break it to you.

 

[Complistic]

Every time I hit a fleeing enemy with tyrande's lunar blaze, im like

 

[Alur]

Typical fat uncultured Americans being ignorant. Hate to break it to you.

All this equality going on today. What's up with that?

How generous of the Americas to lend you our bonus freedom.

Every time I hit a fleeing enemy with tyrande's lunar blaze, im like

Feels good man.

 

[Ketch]

finally got my stupid 100 wins in stupid hearthstone but i didn't get the stupid mount.... it's so stupid

 

[kirblar]

Reddit reporting that Zagara's Hunter Killers are retargeting after their target dies, once again. Glad to see it back.

 

[Aquavelvaman]

Every time I hit a fleeing enemy with tyrande's lunar blaze, im like

Stunning ETC's dance ult with Tyrande is what I live for.

 

[Alur]

First off...dat NeoGAF logo hype.

Second, looks like our boy Fan has left the farm team and joined the big leagues aka Cloud 9 Maelstrom. No clue on who he is replacing or who is replacing him but Vortex is never gonna get anywhere at this rate.

I knew something had to give after this past month. Dunktrain looking for his own Glaurung for Zuna swap.

 

[danielcw]

Now EU truly knows they lack the freedom.

There are a lot of big holidays in European countries.
If we get one per country, that would be a lot of XP.

 

[Yoshichan]

Edit: Nevermind. Blizzard remains a nonsensical trash company.