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Heroes of the Storm |OT2| Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

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Maledict

Member
So in general, what are some solid bans? LiMing, but who else?

Li-Ming, Xul straight up. The possibly Thrall or Illidan depending upon choices.

It's also worth banning dumb stuff on your own team (Gazlowe, artanis etc), or shutting out tanks / supports depending on comp.
 

brian!

Member
1st wave ban ops, pick ops/puzzle pieces, 2nd wave ban/pick puzzle pieces

Any illidan pick pre-2nd wave is prtty ineffective but more dangerous if they get that first ban/pick 2nd wave, still not that dangerous tho, depends on what teams have locked 1st wave.

But ofc banning things you dont want to play against or with is totally legit
 

Ketch

Member
They're doing an AMA on balance soon (today?). The two things I want to ask are: if you remove bolt from Jaina and KT because mobility is supposed to be their core weakness, what is mi ling's core weakness? And why don't they bring pro players in to discuss balance changes before they happen.
 

Altairre

Member
Much more viable. He still requires more skill than just about any other hero, but he has more HP and self sustain, making him a little bit more difficult to take down. He also does a boatload of damage now, considerably more than before.

Illidan is squishier and worse w/o a support now than he was before but play him anyway he's fun. He's also better w/ correct supports now so have fun w/ that

I'm getting conflicting messages here.
 

Alur

Member
brian! is pretty negative on the new Illidan compared to most people I've seen. He liked the old Illidan.

New Illidan has some insane damage output, but brian! is saying he's basically still (and potentially more) reliant on support. That hasn't changed.

So, basically, if you sucked at him before, you will still suck at him and feed but do a little more damage. If you were good at him before, you will still be good but take some adjusting and now you can do more damage.
 

brian!

Member
I'm getting conflicting messages here.

I mean it's up in the air since the patch is new but im of the opinion that both illi and tychus are more feast/famine now, illidan specifically has lost out on his ability to exist in a fight and control his defense uptime w/ the loss of his generics and shield and is more dependent on supports to push him through. For ppl who didnt know how to deal with him before he's more oppressive for sure, because the damage gains are the only thing at play here really. Dats what i think

@ketch i wrote a whole thing before my phone crapped out, i think it's a good balance question. To summarize she shares similar weaknesses w/ most squishies and her biggest lack is no cc. Plus her spells are easy to dodge if you see her cast. But if you compare her to other mages, her greatest benefit is her low risk and inability to be punished on her cds (this involves cd timer, range where you cast, and mana cost). Like the onus is always on the other team to get her.

@alur im pretty into the new illidan actually, i think the rework is pretty successful
 

brian!

Member
I think if you inspect his interaction w/ his best supports (uther, bw, tass, rehgar kinda not really) and his interaction w/ things he's bad against (cc, burst, all spells now too) you get closer to what i mean. His bw/tass interaction is ludacris never let those 3 together

Never meant to be negative lol
In general i think he's stronger now for sure and a lot more oppressive when conditions go his way, but i thought he was pretty good before too
 

Alur

Member
Agreed. I had a shitton of fun playing him on PTR, and I'm at best a middling to bad Illidan.

I dunno where he'll shake out in 2-3 weeks, but people giving him that respect banarino already. He's no fun for Dehaka in my experience, and since I support so much I hate playing against him on most of those as well.
 
First HL match, getting ban pick and I hate the new UI. Why isn't the list just permanent I always clicked it away when looking for something.

I ban Li Ming since our first pick is unresponsive and hover thrall as 4th pick and they go and ban thrall on the other side. That's just mean. They pick Illidan first wave, I wanted to ban Rehgar but was told to ban Abathur and I caved. Continue to pick Muradin and make Illidan's life hell. They go and pick Morales, since when is Morales a good pick with Illidan when your only other frontline is Sonya.

They tried deathballing us and it succeeded at first but then we just wrecked them in teamfights once we grouped up and literally just pushed top lane to the core and finished from there. Had a player go all focus morales again, when all I had to do was stun her or stun Illidan when he was diving deep again.

They also missed the 2nd ban.
 

Alur

Member
I'm betting we'll see some refinements and a little more Blizzard "casual" policy polish added to bans and telling people when they are banning, when they are picking, etc. Seems like lots of folks have struggled with it.
 
needs more audio cues like "Red team - first ban"

"select your hero" when its your turn.

portraits are too zoomed in, causes issue with characters like abathur and anubarak.

the whole interface is too purple and too dark imo.
 

brian!

Member
Me and my brough might sign up for the aram tourney for casual play

If anyone here is down for playing and not caring too much about winning lemme know
 
Oh yeah first HL since the patch and i'm the ban maker ! FIRST BAN LI MING, i almost came.

Oh and the other team first ban : Nova lel, happy to see she cannot be in my team.
 

Ketch

Member
I think if you inspect his interaction w/ his best supports (uther, bw, tass, rehgar kinda not really) and his interaction w/ things he's bad against (cc, burst, all spells now too) you get closer to what i mean. His bw/tass interaction is ludacris never let those 3 together

Never meant to be negative lol
In general i think he's stronger now for sure and a lot more oppressive when conditions go his way, but i thought he was pretty good before too


Yea the other day I thought out valla was sylvanas or I would have picked sylvanas.

edit: woops, this post makes no sense.

I meant to quote people talking about how dark the new draft screen is. I agree. I think valla looks like sylvanas in the new draft screen.
 

Milly79

Member
Me and my brough might sign up for the aram tourney for casual play

If anyone here is down for playing and not caring too much about winning lemme know

I may be able to do it if you wanna give it a go. It's a weekly thing so I'm assuming we only play one game a night?
 

Ketch

Member
I posted in the Reddit AMA, can you guys go upvote my question or something so it gets answered?

I don't know how reddit works.

username on there is KetchGAF
 

kirblar

Member
Hey Zeruijin!

We're always looking at characters that haven't seen any love in a while and providing attention when necessary. A few of our specific criteria for finding Heroes we think are in need of updates (big or small) are: * Talent tiers that are dominated by a Talent (pick or win rate) * Particularly low or high play rates * Particularly low or high win rates * Heroes that have a playstyle that isn't fun to play with or against

Arthas and Anub'arak have updates coming soon™. These won't be as large as the recent updates to Heroes like Kael'thas or Illidan, but should help make them feel fresh and give them more distinctive roles. Artanis is going to have part of Zealot Charge be made baseline in the same release. Rexxar does have changes on the horizon, but it's a little farther out and we haven't decided the scope needed for him yet. We have no active plans to make any large changes to Leoric right now, but we're watching him and will always make number adjustments as necessary.

Concerning Supports, we do have a small update coming out in a few weeks that should help low pick rate Heroics on them (as well as a few other roles).
Would assume they're looking at Leo's HP and March damage. Anub probably going to end up w a tankier build option to help w QM?
 

kirblar

Member
BlizzClaudio [score hidden] 7 minutes ago

Our internal data shows Li-Ming falling in line with many of our other heroes. We don't think this is a problem with Li-Ming, it is probably related to perspective as you identified. Her ban potential is certainly higher right now since she's part of the new hotness that is our latest heroes. We think as she's out longer, new heroes get introduced, hero updates are released, she won't see quite as much attention as she's getting right now. If her win rate starts to get out of line, we can always react in one of our quicker balance patches.
This is bad. They don't get the issue. (she's feast/famine and unfun- pros ban her too.)
 
They didn't answer you directly Ketch but they answered someone else...

https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofth...lo_rhereosofthestorm_our_developers_are_back/

Scruffers said:
In every Hero League game I have been in since yesterday, Li-Ming has been banned first or second every game. She clearly has the biggest individual impact in a given team fight and people are always claiming shes OP. I can't imagine her ever getting past the ban phase.
Do you think it's a problem with the hero? Or more a problem of the perspective of the current playerbase?
Should her impact on a teamfight (aka her resets) be tuned down? Or other heroes changed to match the influence she has over who wins a teamfight.

BlizzClaudio Game Designer said:
Our internal data shows Li-Ming falling in line with many of our other heroes. We don't think this is a problem with Li-Ming, it is probably related to perspective as you identified. Her ban potential is certainly higher right now since she's part of the new hotness that is our latest heroes. We think as she's out longer, new heroes get introduced, hero updates are released, she won't see quite as much attention as she's getting right now. If her win rate starts to get out of line, we can always react in one of our quicker balance patches.

I'm so white girl right now because of how much I literally can't even...

BlizzClaudio said:
The release of Li-Ming and Xul has caused some changes in our testing, but not large changes. Before a new hero releases we are definitely trying to simulate a more "live" testing environment, which can be a challenge when we're working on so many new heroes, battlegrounds, hero updates, etc. We're constantly adjusting our process and will keep working to improve this in the future. Our goal is 50% on release, but we have the ability to make quick changes now, but typically won't make adjustments for a new hero until 2 weeks has passed so we can see where they settle in. We are obviously willing to react much faster to problematic hero updates if they are released too strong or too weak, and we plan to continue with this approach.

How about using the Public Test Realm to simulate a live testing environment?
 

Alur

Member
Also worth noting they repeatedly said the same shit about KT on more than one occasion. Eventually they always come around because the complaints are just too many. Something doesn't have to be auto-win to be bad for the game, or not fun to play against.

I don't think it's the severely out of whack OP (though she does clearly have like every advantage sans CC), but it's definitely the Nova-style "this shit sucks OP". Any hero that can carry so hard where you can be winning a fight 5v3 and then have someone slip up and die and it result in a full wipe for your team...is not healthy, and that's kind of what she does. And often.

That's common in other MOBAs but it feels awful in this one. Perhaps, as the pool expands as they claim, more heroes will be able to do a similar thing (Greymane can to a lesser degree) and it won't seem so oppressive. Right now, though...wooo-weeee. Thanks for the bans Blizzard.
 

Ketch

Member
Would assume they're looking at Leo's HP and March damage. Anub probably going to end up w a tankier build option to help w QM?

sounds like the next changes are going to be Artanis, Arthas, and anubarak. I don't expect to see any changes to leo until we see those three addressed. Arthas' talents are so shitty so I'm pretty excited for that.


Yea I saw that Jaundicejuice. I think they're dumb and actually confused about who's blinded by Li-Ming's newness. I don't want to live in a world where it's not okay to have blink on Jaina but extreme range, dominance, and laser slow are okay on Li Ming.
 

kirblar

Member
Their Kerrigan comments makes me think she's going to get Zagara-esque early game scaling.
One of the things I love about working on HOTS is that we're free to break the rules where it makes sense. I can't say we're planning to do this often but it is another tool in our toolkit. It's possible you'll even see characters with 3 Heroic Abilities in the future :)
Zagara 3rd heroic definitely happening.
 

Alavard

Member
How about using the Public Test Realm to simulate a live testing environment?

It's gotta be possible to do this, but it could be tricky to implement. How long do you leave them on the PTR for testing? You definitely need more than a week, and probably more than 2 in order to give Blizz time to study the data, and code the changes. And now the question is do you test those changes on the PTR too? How many iterations do you go through? It's completely doable, but would probably destroy any hope of maintaining the 3 week/4 week schedule we've been getting for hero releases.
 
I just don't understand how they can think Bolt of the Storm is bad on Jaina and Kael'Thas at 20 because it negates one of their core weaknesses, mobility, but then they can turn around and be fine with Li-Ming having that built into her kit from level 1. That BotS-like range can be talented into at 13. I don't understand the logic. Like I agree, Bolt is terrible and had to go, it's a get out of jail free card but Li-Ming needs to lose something, it probably won't be her mobility.

If Li-Ming didn't have Dominance, or couldn't pick it at level 4, this might be a different conversation. Like her range, mobility, how her trait currently functions through proximity and her burst damage would still be problematic but she would lack sustain. You actually might be able to chase her from a fight. They need to look at how Dominance and her trait function though, proximity alone should not be enough. If she doesn't secure the kill, they should not proc. If she only assists, then gets half the CD. Too much is free on her right now.

If she's consistently banned every game, they'll have to look at her kit.

It's gotta be possible to do this, but it could be tricky to implement. How long do you leave them on the PTR for testing? You definitely need more than a week, and probably more than 2 in order to give Blizz time to study the data, and code the changes. And now the question is do you test those changes on the PTR too? How many iterations do you go through? It's completely doable, but would probably destroy any hope of maintaining the 3 week/4 week schedule we've been getting for hero releases.

They do selective access to Legion's Alpha with top raiding guilds for raid tuning, they should do the same with HotS pros for major builds and new heroes. Just run a build by them and get some feedback. Some of these problems seem immediately evident, where a large collection of people go "wtf m8". I dunno what the impact would be on the content delivery schedule, but I've stated I would be fine with slower better balanced releases and others strongly disagreed. In the end we don't know what the knock-ons would be for content releases if they adopted this approach.
 

kirblar

Member
Whew! What a question samurinja!

When our Design team starts looking at creating new Heroes, or when we're looking to do a Hero update, we definitely try to make sure that a good variety of strategies, playstyles, and counters are present in the game for players to choose from.

We do have spreadsheets that detail what each Hero is designed to be good at, what they're designed to be bad at, and what they're designed to counter. A recent example was us identifying that we lacked Warriors pointed at countering mage Heroes, but had a plethora that could counter Basic Attackers. We felt Stitches base kit was pointed toward being strong against mages, so we tweaked his Talents such that he was even more pointed toward it. Anub'arak is another Warrior that is going in this direction in a future patch.

In general, we get excited about thinking about draft implications when designing or updating Heroes (I'm sure the Hero Designers down the hall would love for me to clarify that it isn't the only thing that we look at when making kits though). It's important as our roster grows that we don't just make "better Vallas" and "better Muradins", but instead create a more diverse and complex roster to promote new and unique synergies and counters, so we don't have a revolving door of "who's on top this patch" in your Heroes games.
Anub'Arak going anti-mage like Stitches. I like this.
 
I hope they add a hero with a ranged mana-burn nuke eventually. Or someone like Pugna. Someone with a ward like Pugna's that reflects magic nuke damage back would be hilarious against a Li-ming.
 

Ketch

Member
Anubarak's Dota counter part has mana burn as a base ability. It burns a % of the mana and does proportional damage.

also, kind of funny that the Balance AMA has barely any discussion on Li Ming considering she's probably the #1 problem with balance at the moment.

Here's another Blizzard quote from that AMA:
One of our goals going forward is to have our heroes have clear strengths and weaknesses, and we don't want to give them talents that give them an out to overcome those weaknesses.
 
Anubarak's Dota counter part has mana burn as a base ability. It burns a % of the mana and does proportional damage.

also, kind of funny that the Balance AMA has barely any discussion on Li Ming considering she's probably the #1 problem with balance at the moment.

Here's another Blizzard quote from that AMA:

Funny when it comes to Li Ming
"She's squishy"
So let's give her a blink, health recovery on take downs, and shields.
"She uses mana fast"
So let's have her first pick of talents directly counter that


There are no downsides to li ming.
 
I recognize that Li-Ming may have a win-rate in the range that Blizzard are looking for. But averaged win-rates don't tell the whole story. Something may be balanced for average players but still be broken at the higher skill tiers, let alone the professional level. I'd be curious to know whether her metrics are consistent across those tiers, or whether she sees the same disparity that Lost Vikings and Cho'Gall presumably do.

And then there's all the other data points you can look at. Li-Ming does obscene damage relative to every other character/ability with little to no downsides or risks. It impacts every future hero design if her level of burst is considered the new normal. I just don't see a trade-off anywhere near comparable to Jaina/KTs lack of mobility/survivability. As far as I'm concerned, all her abilities should do half siege damage if the design philosophy is "hero killer".
 
I recognize that Li-Ming may have a win-rate in the range that Blizzard are looking for. But averaged win-rates don't tell the whole story. Something may be balanced for average players but still be broken at the higher skill tiers, let alone the professional level.

blizzard have been chastised for their obsession over win-rate being their primary reasons for balance and they're just plugging their ears singing "la-la-la-la". they know its wrong but are too ashamed to admit it or something, maybe too prideful.
 
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