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Heroes of the Storm |OT2| Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
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jaundicejuice
Member
Heroes have greater flexibility in play-style in Dota and that's largely because of gold and items. It's the lack of these things in HotS restricts talent design and even player choice, for all heroes.
Without gold and items they designed themselves into a corner with this talent system. Now they are stuck with these really rigid talent requirements to make someone valid at a specific role. In Dota those required talents are instead simply required items you farm. Rather than every support having to have and choose cleanse, the carries would farm a Black King Bar.
Items actually occupy an important and very boring place that the talent system has to pick up the slack for.
Without gold and items they designed themselves into a corner with this talent system. Now they are stuck with these really rigid talent requirements to make someone valid at a specific role. In Dota those required talents are instead simply required items you farm. Rather than every support having to have and choose cleanse, the carries would farm a Black King Bar.
Items actually occupy an important and very boring place that the talent system has to pick up the slack for.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
they should take cleanse from all supports and give them to characters like medivh
yeah
good design for supports depends on restructuring a lot of the game so it probably won't happen and blizzard has shown over and over that support = different healing gimmick
but I mean if they ever did revamp dmg numbers and everything...:
redistribute cc to supports, take away chunks of healing from certain supports, remove cleanse from all supports, give supports anti-cc skills, redo cooldowns...
ice block is a pretty good example of something good in this game...but let it be a proactive spell used to make a play between two allied heroes, not something limited to selfish play...
abathur was one of those good ideas for a potential support if they didnt all-in on making him a pusher, like w/ some help a support who's gimmick was that they could reach any hero on the map at any time could have been great
another thing that really makes it hard for blizz to get away from heal-centrism w/r/t supports, ppl just can't handle playing scared and safe and smart in this game, like ppl really balk at the idea of restoring old cc duration, but the issue here really is the amount of options you have against certain cc, like vision/positioning not being good enough against talented etc q, lack of spells to disrupt/dodge chain cc, and so on. chaining cc should be rewarded and super scary, but not 1-2-3 easy to pull off. can't really fault blizz for lowering duration instead of redoing the entire game though lol
warriors should be more like dehaka and leoric (sans entomb) instead of etc and diablo, tyrael should be an example of aggressive support and less tanky in the context of a severely differently tuned game, just thinking about kits here
good design for supports depends on restructuring a lot of the game so it probably won't happen and blizzard has shown over and over that support = different healing gimmick
but I mean if they ever did revamp dmg numbers and everything...:
redistribute cc to supports, take away chunks of healing from certain supports, remove cleanse from all supports, give supports anti-cc skills, redo cooldowns...
ice block is a pretty good example of something good in this game...but let it be a proactive spell used to make a play between two allied heroes, not something limited to selfish play...
abathur was one of those good ideas for a potential support if they didnt all-in on making him a pusher, like w/ some help a support who's gimmick was that they could reach any hero on the map at any time could have been great
another thing that really makes it hard for blizz to get away from heal-centrism w/r/t supports, ppl just can't handle playing scared and safe and smart in this game, like ppl really balk at the idea of restoring old cc duration, but the issue here really is the amount of options you have against certain cc, like vision/positioning not being good enough against talented etc q, lack of spells to disrupt/dodge chain cc, and so on. chaining cc should be rewarded and super scary, but not 1-2-3 easy to pull off. can't really fault blizz for lowering duration instead of redoing the entire game though lol
warriors should be more like dehaka and leoric (sans entomb) instead of etc and diablo, tyrael should be an example of aggressive support and less tanky in the context of a severely differently tuned game, just thinking about kits here
They should take cleanse from all supports and throw it in the dumpster.
Figure out other ways to do it ( like DS/Aegis)
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Also dial down on the stuns simultaneously ideally by introducing diminishing returns and nerf mosh pit.
mosh pit should not be a warrior skill and etc q should not stun imo
dunno how i feel about diminishing returns, I'd rather have cc be more interactive than it currently is though, getting hit by cc should feel devastating, but a lot of current cc design (etc q, tyrande followup, diablo chain, and more) just feels like yeh ima click this button and then click them and we're good. things like mounts and vision also fuk w/ how cc works in this game
mosh pit (like devastating aoe cc) as an idea is not bad design imo, like comboing it w/ dshield and stuff are things I want to see in this game, but there should be more skillful answers to it and it shouldnt be so easy to pull off. w/ mosh pit you have a pretty clear idea of what a particular hero is going for and what you want to avoid and you play w/ this in mind, I think that is pretty good. I think about how enigma has something similar in dota, but also how the environment is completely different w/r/t landing black hole vs. mosh pit, and how the design of the two heroes are completely different as well (etc...has a skill that puts him into a group of ppl, let's give him a really synergistic ult where he already has a skill that does most of the work for him! vs. enigma has to toil to get an item that will even allow his devastating skill to be landed in the first place because otherwise he's instantly going to die if he gets close)
i dont think mosh is op or anything, but the road to moshpit is horribly clean
dunno how i feel about diminishing returns, I'd rather have cc be more interactive than it currently is though, getting hit by cc should feel devastating, but a lot of current cc design (etc q, tyrande followup, diablo chain, and more) just feels like yeh ima click this button and then click them and we're good. things like mounts and vision also fuk w/ how cc works in this game
mosh pit (like devastating aoe cc) as an idea is not bad design imo, like comboing it w/ dshield and stuff are things I want to see in this game, but there should be more skillful answers to it and it shouldnt be so easy to pull off. w/ mosh pit you have a pretty clear idea of what a particular hero is going for and what you want to avoid and you play w/ this in mind, I think that is pretty good. I think about how enigma has something similar in dota, but also how the environment is completely different w/r/t landing black hole vs. mosh pit, and how the design of the two heroes are completely different as well (etc...has a skill that puts him into a group of ppl, let's give him a really synergistic ult where he already has a skill that does most of the work for him! vs. enigma has to toil to get an item that will even allow his devastating skill to be landed in the first place because otherwise he's instantly going to die if he gets close)
i dont think mosh is op or anything, but the road to moshpit is horribly clean
Heh, I actually feel the opposite after watching bits of the invitational this year. It reminded me of why I much prefer HotS.
- ridiculous amounts of CC that seems to rely on chain stuns and combos that are not preventable at all
- Games lasting upwards of an hour and longer. Seeing a team win a team fight at the 30 minute mark and then do nothing but gain an incremental advantage
- needlessly complex basic abilities that sometimes feel complex for the sake of being complex, which creates a wildly impenetrable game to someone who doesn't play very very very regularly
HotS has its issues, and I do think supports in particular need to be looked at and addressed. I'm cheered up by Auriel because she's so damn fun to play, and hope they can bring others into line with her - and I agree that cleanse is a big issue overall. But right now I'm reminded of why I play HotS over dota, and will continue to do so - and I don't want hotS to become more like dota.
(also, lets put to rest this idea that Icefrog is some balancing genius for Dota. Has everyone already forgotten last years Stormspirit fiasco?)
- ridiculous amounts of CC that seems to rely on chain stuns and combos that are not preventable at all
- Games lasting upwards of an hour and longer. Seeing a team win a team fight at the 30 minute mark and then do nothing but gain an incremental advantage
- needlessly complex basic abilities that sometimes feel complex for the sake of being complex, which creates a wildly impenetrable game to someone who doesn't play very very very regularly
HotS has its issues, and I do think supports in particular need to be looked at and addressed. I'm cheered up by Auriel because she's so damn fun to play, and hope they can bring others into line with her - and I agree that cleanse is a big issue overall. But right now I'm reminded of why I play HotS over dota, and will continue to do so - and I don't want hotS to become more like dota.
(also, lets put to rest this idea that Icefrog is some balancing genius for Dota. Has everyone already forgotten last years Stormspirit fiasco?)
i don't like the concept of linking cc w/ warriors, but I think having cc on warriors isn't bad (but they should have less of a focus on it than say supports imo). warriors should mainly be a different subset than melee assassins, where the assassins mainly focus on blowing up targets, but warriors can do things like bodyblock or disrupt, but the line should be blurred a little bit between the two. their survivability should also not be based on blizz just jacking up their hp too...something like a good leoric w letting him stay in there is good design to me, like warriors being able to be in the shit should be more conditional and more reliant on skillful use.
anyway this is all fanfiction, I'm pretty certain that it is unfeasible to make grand changes to this game at this point
anyway this is all fanfiction, I'm pretty certain that it is unfeasible to make grand changes to this game at this point
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Who's drafting for Denial? They gave Astral a comp it would take a team much lesser than them to lose.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Srsly Zag, ETC, Uther, Tass, Illidan.
i meant more in the sense of dehaka w, where it's kind of an ok choose between stepping in this area or not, or leoric w
or even the threat of grand cc, like lets say etc doesnt have q in his kit so he has to walk up to them and they have to kite back or risk getting moshed
like space control that influences the enemy team i guess, cc is fine for this but it shouldnt be "oh i need cc in this comp, better pick a warrior since they are the premier sources of cc". arthas has pretty good usages of cc via his e, where it is very position heavy and poor at doing things like attacking their backline.
actually i think stitches is kinda of what im thinking about here (slam is an awful move though), like mosh -> support move, bile -> warrior move, hook as cc that displaces and can interrupt channeling, but isnt the easiest to land, e as move that allows him to stay in the middle of things.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Caffeine on Muradin jumps misses bolt rewinds jumps misses bolt mmkay
I think for the most part the kits are decent there's just multiple abilities that are extremely lack luster to down right useless.
There have been too many times where I've heard about an ability and thought, damn that's gonna be so good, just to find out that the way it's implemented makes it useless. Resurrection is the most recent example. Like of course that ability is trash, because if it worked the way it does in your head it would be too good. Medivac is another one. Possession was one for a long ass time. Fuckin gazlowe laser. Misha in general. There's just a lot of stuff that should be cool but is actually lame. Like, I hear about it and I'm like that'll be so cool! Then I try it and I'm like, well that's fuckin lame. Even stuff that's actually good still isn't as cool as it should be. Like KT's trait or even void prison.
The reason it has to be that way is that they want the game to be simple to understand and feel fair. But it's severely limited the design and created a situation where the simplest things are the most unfair (stun lock for example) while also preventing anything different or slightly more complex from being powerful. Medivh is a prime example. Finally a hero that will take decision making and finesse to be strong, maybe really fucking strong! But why try to finesse when you could just push Q to stun someone or heal 30% of their hp? They have to make midivh weaker to begin with because otherwise he'd be op as fuck.
They're stuck in between simple but easy to understand and complex but over powered.
I think the talent system could easily fill in for items. The problem is that there's really no variety in talents. All of the talents are basically just a choice between what ability you want to buff. Because of that you just pick the talents that min max the role your hero is. Tanks pick increased survivability or increased stun duration, assassins pick increased damage, healers go heal or cleanse.
In DOTA the items add utility. Antimage gets cleave and life steal, Sven gets blink. Supports get wards and force staffs. Storm spirit gets an item that lets him silence people.
Talents in hots should add utility that your hero is missing. The good talents do. That's why everybody picks bolt of the storm. Talents should add utility things like cleave or substantial move speed or disable and then those options should be on tier or compete with each other to create meaningful strategic choices. Cleanse should be a talent choice on assassins as a self cast only ability so that raynor, for example, would have to chose between getting a stun on his Q or being able to cleanse himself.
Dr. Buni
Member
HotS is also plagued by ridiculous amounts of CC, the difference is there are not items to buy, items that give you more CC.
The amount of CC has really reduced to be honest. You no longer see Tyrande all the time (in fact hardly ever), and Kael's going to finally drop out of the top tier as well. To be honest ETC seems the most problematic cc hero right now - he's just too good at what he does, and then on top of that he has a game winning ult.
We're definitely not in the stun meta anymore, that's for certain. Stuns are powerful, but they aren't being chained together all the time like they used too.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Denial and Naventic qualify.
No surprises there right? GFE and Murlocs are already qualified aren't they?
NA scene is such a confusing mess right now.
Turdburger
Member
Look at Rehgar's chain heal vs Dazzle's equivalent or the way Oracle heals versus, say, Malfurion. Uther's Q is literally a point and click heal. Malf's Q is a point and click heal. Does it get more boring and generic than that? This isn't WoW where you have 20 abilities across a hotbar with macros everywhere and can afford to have vanilla spells. Each hero in HOTS gets 4-5 skills, and it feels like so few of the heroes in HOTS have synergies within their own kits. Oracle basically won DC their game 1 against EG in that fight at top by keeping Mirana alive and it was in a way so interesting it caused EG's players to overextend to attempt to kill her. Could anything like that ever happen in HOTS? Absolutely not. You keep Uther's Q cooldown in the back of your mind and realize it can only do one fucking thing.
Brightwing's Blink Heal is great though. It heals minimally and relocates Brightwing to a position to use abilities and heal allies passively. But BW beyond her core kit is abysmally designed because they can't figure out what the hell to do with her talent tree. The shield should just exist on her teleport, and cleanse should be baked into polymorph and it ought to be castable on allies as well.
You also brought up a good point with support Naga/Sven. But that even just goes to show how much more flexible heroes in DOTA are, and that's an amazing thing for the drafting phase. We just saw the support naga play a huge role in TI6 drafts.
I think pretty much every support in HOTS has gigantic problems, either with their base kit (Malf, Uther) or their talent tree (Tassadar). The role as a whole is completely fucked and needs a total overhaul, but Blizzard decided to do essentially nothing after looking at supports.
I can't believe the HOTS devs can watch what happens in DOTA or League and not feel like the way supports operate in their game is completely fucked.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Not really, yes and yes.
I think you might be over blowing it just a little bit you have to keep in mind the differences in the game. Oracle or dazzle would be either too complicated or too powerful in the hots environment. Having every ability available at lvl one as well as the extremely team fight orientated nature of the game is so vastly different then dota, and like Maledict mentioned that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I think there are good synergies in heroes kits, it's just that there's some abilities that are just kind of meh. Like bright wings nuke or diablos flame stomp or tassadars psi storm, like they don't serve a purpose other then to do general damage in a general area. But I do think there's interesting synergies in most heroes kits, like feral lunge into totem is good. monk is a good example because his whole kit kind of comes together to enable really aggressive dive comps. The problem is as it stands supports can't have too much utility or damage or anything else really because healing is already too damn good.
They could have more supports like medivh and they absolutely should, but unless they fix healing no one will ever pick them. Being able to instantly erase the enemy teams advantage moment to moment with such little effort is too powerful.
They can tune the numbers down and fix the talents to Allow for more strategy, but it doesn't look like they're interested.
Turdburger
Member
This is a good point but every other hero has every ability available at level 1. You obviously can't give heroes mind-numbingly powerful combinations that are available at level 1, you have to introduce them through the talent tree. The problem is that they really don't use the talent tree that way. And when they do, you get talents that are must-picks and other talents that are complete garbage in comparison. Gathering Radiance and Righteous Defense are both really cool talents but they both sit there on a tier with Benediction and Benediction is an ability that (a) is too powerful and (b) the spectator can't even see. Additionally, the talent tree as it currently stands generally favors you picking a build that is greatly focused around one of your core abilities so that the talents themselves synergize with each other. Dunktrain has gone on rants in the past about this, as it pigeonholes you into talenting one ability rather than adapting based on the game. This further constrains talent diversity.
Rehgar's level 13 talents all essentially translate to "heal additional HP." Meanwhile a talent like Totemic Projection, which has interesting gameplay applications both for players and spectators and thus quite a bit of potential, never gets seen because (a) it's sitting on the same tier as Cleanse and (b) it doesn't give any additional raw number output. Even if Cleanse wasn't on that tier, nobody would pick that talent because 2 seconds of cooldown reduction across your whole base kit is way too powerful numerically and vision as a utility (Far Sight) is also way more valuable. So we have a really cool talent that just gets buried because of bad design philosophies.
There are far too many "do some general damage in an area" and "heal some damage on a target" abilities in this game. Tyrande Q, Uther Q, Rehgar Q, Tassadar's Q, it's really dumb. On the topic of Tass, Force Wall is great, but his entire kit and talent tree is a complete disaster. They need to completely remake that hero from the ground up.
Totally agreed. This game needs heroes like Medivh that enable shit to happen and counterplay the other team's actions rather than just blindly pressing buttons to deal damage or heal (as an aside, however, Medivh's Q is just "click to deal damage" but I digress). On that topic, HOTS is also badly lacking initiation heroes which further contributes to the value of poke and heal. What's the best initiation in the game right now? Muradin jump, ETC slide, Stitches hook, Falstad Fly/Gust, Void Prison, Kerrigan, Sundering. But for example they can't make Sundering too strong because it's sitting on an assassin hero that does a shitload of DPS. So they've chosen to nerf the stun and CD on Sundering because it's on an assassin so that they can keep that hero as an "assassin" that deals lots of damage without being imbalanced. As a result one of the best initiators in the game is no longer anywhere near as impactful.
We need more Tidehunters and Elder Titans in addition to more interesting healing options.
Turdburger
Member
I think ETC seems this way because he can initiate. If the game had more sources of good, reliable initiation he wouldn't seem so valuable. He can powerslide in, take damage, and then peel for himself. Who else in the game is there to reliably initiate and punish mistakes? There really isn't anyone, especially now that Sundering is half as good as it used to be.
I'm glad they reduced stun times on heroes like Kaelthas, Falstad and Raynor -- that shit was absolutely moronic. But I think they need to re-add stuns onto heroes where stunning things and initiation is what they do: not much sieging, doing much damage or healing. It allows for kills to happen and mistakes to actually be punished but requires execution.
Well, Gamescom is this week, and it sounds like we can expect something HotS related there. Really hoping it's something beyond just the next two heroes. Really itching for a new map at the very least.
Also, assuming that the next two heroes are Samuro (orc blademaster) and Varian Wrynn, I'm hoping Varian comes out first. Not super looking forward to Samuro given that he's almost certainly going to have stealth as part of his kit (although it may not be perma-stealth).
Also, assuming that the next two heroes are Samuro (orc blademaster) and Varian Wrynn, I'm hoping Varian comes out first. Not super looking forward to Samuro given that he's almost certainly going to have stealth as part of his kit (although it may not be perma-stealth).
thekillermuffin
Member
As my favorite hero, I'm perfectly okay with his lack of popularity. He's wicked good, and no one expects him
This 100%. Rexxar is a beast.As my favorite hero, I'm perfectly okay with his lack of popularity. He's wicked good, and no one expects him
I'm not sure it's possible to make him considerably more popular. Even if they went the route of making Misha entirely controllable directly, TLV function like that, and are only marginally more played.
He's top 15 in winrates. I don't think he needs a buff. He has low popularity, but he doesn't need to cater to the masses.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
I still haven't played Rexxar once. Just like Stitches, though with Stitches he just disgusts me from an art perspective.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Overwatch just got mmr decay.
thekillermuffin
Member
http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20243785/
Ranked Season 1 extended to the week of September 13th. Time to get those TL placement matches done (hopefully).
Ranked Season 1 extended to the week of September 13th. Time to get those TL placement matches done (hopefully).
Hots bear hero vs. dota bear hero is a pretty good comparison point. My understanding is that both the simplification of control and clunkiness is due to engine limits? So i can get with that. But kit-wise he's terribly dull and sort of a hots poster child for design that could have had a lot of interesting things going on but doesn't
To be fair, lone Druid is super dull.
I mean in the sense that ld doesnt have a skill that is "heal bear for x amount", or 2 skills that dissappear when bear is gone, and is a little more linked to his bear, though i guess thematically ld is linked w/ his bear in the story, and misha is just the name rexxar gives to whatever bear he mind controls. But yeh there are a couple of different ways to w/ ls and one way to go with rexxar.
Even giving misha extra siege dmg would have been nice, like something anything
Even giving misha extra siege dmg would have been nice, like something anything
Oh, wow. I remember hearing "I'm in wait mode after hearing how she got shit on". Good to know Ketch is the true bro around these parts.
He literally strong armed me into playing.
I was like "yo whaddup datboi wanna OW" and he said "yea b but im in a comp game" and I sed "dats cool, cool, I need to plug up my headset and get something to drink".
So a few mins pass, y'know, like minutes do, and then I log in and this motherfucker has logged out. He logged out breh. Sends me a message and he's like "I quit that comp game man I ain't bout dat lyfe" and I was all like "ayyy lmao u on 10 min cooldown now b" and he was like "no shit let's play HOTS".
I was like "nah mane i ain't into dat freaky shit but if if u rly rly want to i will play a couple" and this fool up and logs into HOTS. So we played three games. It was not very fun. Two very bad teams (and comps included), and a third bad comp but we won anyway. Afterwards Ketch was like "guess I can't have fun playing this game anymore" and my mom got scared and said Youre movin with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air. I whistled for a cab and when it came near The license plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror..
I was like "yo whaddup datboi wanna OW" and he said "yea b but im in a comp game" and I sed "dats cool, cool, I need to plug up my headset and get something to drink".
So a few mins pass, y'know, like minutes do, and then I log in and this motherfucker has logged out. He logged out breh. Sends me a message and he's like "I quit that comp game man I ain't bout dat lyfe" and I was all like "ayyy lmao u on 10 min cooldown now b" and he was like "no shit let's play HOTS".
I was like "nah mane i ain't into dat freaky shit but if if u rly rly want to i will play a couple" and this fool up and logs into HOTS. So we played three games. It was not very fun. Two very bad teams (and comps included), and a third bad comp but we won anyway. Afterwards Ketch was like "guess I can't have fun playing this game anymore" and my mom got scared and said Youre movin with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air. I whistled for a cab and when it came near The license plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror..
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Today was not a good day 4 stomps in a row
lol sure it was. You've got that backward. It's always been more like we'll play what you want or I (and anyone else) can play by myself/themselves. You always been on that monogamous gamer lyfe. I appreciate your constant attempts to deflect in every way, doe. No one can do it like you bb.
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