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[Alur]

I think the most surprising thing I've learned from this discussion is that you think Valla is difficult, and that you think Greymane is less difficult her. I can't say I agree there on either count. I think Valla is one of the easiest heroes in the game to be at least average with, and Greymane is one of the easiest heroes in the game (along with Butcher and Illidan) to make your teammates wanna delete you IRL.

I encourage you to make a smurf or two and enjoy the lower leagues on each for a few games before you carry yourself out of it. I think you'll get a new appreciation for what most of us talk about in these discussions.

Regarding Greymane in particular, you find Q easy to hit but above a diamond player is discussing how difficult it is to hit. If you run Quick Cast, it's even more so as you have no indicator, and if you're new you may not even know how to get it back but you put Quick Cast on because people told you that's how you should play. Splashing minions isn't terrible, agreed, but in a team fight that's mostly out the window. Then there's stutter stepping with less range than Raynor, and of course the desire to go into Worgen and kill kill kill but not having any fucking clue when it's safe to do so or even at least a valuable trade. There's nothing really safe at all about Greymane from my POV. The survivability is better now, but if you're just starting out and you're playing in the starting MMR range, good luck not dying 5+ times if you want to actually get any damage in because you're always going to feel like you need to jump in with that hero and won't have the patience or knowledge to wait for the right moment.

Ranged w/ mobility is king if you want survivability but in this game you cant just use it as an escape like in other mobas, you often need to use it to go forward to hit priority targets. It's a bit more nuanced which is why i wouldnt suggest valla or falstad to a new player, but for gmane it's pretty much just laid out for the player.

If you wouldn't recommend Falstad or Valla because they have Barrel Roll/Vault and the nuances around it, why would you recommend Greymane who has the same thing only it actually puts you ON the target and into the enemy team instead of just near them? I mean, he has the E in and the E out, but if you E in at the wrong time...stunned/rooted dead. And that's basically what lower MMR is all about. Tons of people doing the wrong thing at the wrong time and most of them never learning any better.

 

[taaakun]

It's not immediately intuitive, but skillshots are good for newbies in general, as there's an immediate feedback between attempt and failure. It's easy to see yourself missing skillshots and know what you need to do to aim better, whereas mistakes with positioning or moving around the map is much harder to recognize and improve on. Valla is AA but is definitely not noob friendly.

IMO Nazeebo with his long range abilities level 1 talent is a pretty easy hero to handle.
Basically all you do is:
1) Throw spiders and frogs at people when you are at range, and stay safe when they are on cooldown.
2) Try your best to hit people with walls. Don't trap your teammates.
3) Use Gargantuan when fights happen.
4) Stack up your HP and mana in lane.

It's not that complicated!

 

[brian!]

Because greymane only e's in to kill stuff or to outtrade; yeah a good gmane player can e in and juke cooldowns for his team but it's not necesary and only really recommended if he has good support. I def think valla/falstad/maybe tychus have a higher skill ceiling than greymane.

I mean i get the whole all my greymane's suicide in my games thing. But to my understanding we're not talking about buzzfeed top 10 3asiest heroes to win with at lower levels, just "what are good heroes to learn the game with"

Nazeebo is a good choice too, low skill and flowcharty but dependent on fundamentals and timing his skills

 

[Ketch]

anybody down for some overwatch tonight maybe?




also, greymane is not a good hero for new players.

 

[Alur]

anybody down for some overwatch tonight maybe?

def wanna check out the timeline brawl. seems pretty cool. I might be able to be on a bit later. Gonna see if I can get into it now, looks like it updated.

 

[Kioshen]

I'd be up for some OW action but tomorrow evening, unfortunately.

 

[protonium]

.

 

[brian!]

Im trying but i have difficulty understanding the argument against it, well besides that he's expensive

...his winrate is higher in bronze silver qm compared to raynor? But i dunno what that actually says since raynor is like the worst hero in the game atm. Unless you count tyrande and sylv, he is also the highest wr ranged autoer in bronze/silv too

Oh wait no tracer is the highest but we all know why she would be + shes actually a mage

 

[KillerDark]

Gotta say I agree that Greymane would be really bad for new players... its extremely easy to dive in when you shouldn't and just get killed over and over. Very easy to be a non factor in the game with him, especially when you are new.

 

[Alur]

It's a shame Genji is almost guaranteed to have the Oni skin as his paid skin. That new Blackwatch skin would be neat.

 

[Alavard]

It's a shame Genji is almost guaranteed to have the Oni skin as his paid skin. That new Blackwatch skin would be neat.

I'd love to see him in a (diablo) demon hunter outfit or a (warcraft) SI:7 or rogue tier outfit myself.

 

[brian!]

Gotta say I agree that Greymane would be really bad for new players... its extremely easy to dive in when you shouldn't and just get killed over and over. Very easy to be a non factor in the game with him, especially when you are new.

Dont disagree with this, but here's where im coming from; to properly play ranged assassin in hots you have to be able to be able to target priority targets while shaping the fight as the 2nd most desirable target on the team. In terms of learning this playstyle raynor is an incredibly bad example; he's pretty much a walking turret. If arthas w/ rime walks up to him he has literally countered him because raynor has no way of hitting other things and auto attacks scale poorly in this game. It is incredibly important for ranged autoers to be able to hit the targets they want to hit. The best autoer in the game, valla, is a great example of a well equipped ranged attacker: she can bait cds, she can switch between autoing and popping off with eqw(r) onto the backline, and she get ms from her lvl 1 to boot which makes her hard to get to.

Gmane is like a simplified version of this; he only goes in to kill or get a trade and he doesnt have to think about dragging the front line a certain direction or trying to outplay a cd. He just has to auto and throw qs from safety, and activates his burst when proper. Basically valla without the ability to draw cds unless he has something like tass or uther.

This might sound heathenish but i dont find greymane to be any more susceptible to bad engages than say a bad e from valla or falstad. A bad engage is a bad engage. I absolutely agree that greymane's base kit predisposes ppl to bad engages. But to me that doesn't take away from the fact that he is the most simple way of learning proper ranged dmg play, that if you can figure out how to play greymane you'll have a great foundation for ranged assassin play.

In low qm all ranged assassins post a low wr, and id say the reason is pretty simple; they cant kill ppl before they get killed. Id say the reason for gmane topping the ranged assassins in this mmr is simple too, ppl dont expect his damage. So this is a good thing to me w/r/t learning your limits, since effectively you're just shitting on ppl until you reach a point where you cant get away w/ the fradulence, and this is when you start being able to identify proper situations to engage or not.

Anyway ill let it drop now lol

 

[Alur]

I'd love to see him in a (diablo) demon hunter outfit or a (warcraft) SI:7 or rogue tier outfit myself.

That'd be neat, especially rogue. Be a nice tie-in.

 

[Dice]

IMO Nazeebo with his long range abilities level 1 talent is a pretty easy hero to handle.
Basically all you do is:
1) Throw spiders and frogs at people when you are at range, and stay safe when they are on cooldown.
2) Try your best to hit people with walls. Don't trap your teammates.
3) Use Gargantuan when fights happen.
4) Stack up your HP and mana in lane.

It's not that complicated!

Yeah with Nazeebo you probably won't be a killing machine at first but that isn't the point with him. It's kinda hard to fuck up so bad you offer a bad contribution to the team with him.

 

[Pooya]

Have they given out cheerleader Kerrigan yet?

I guess I didn't win.

 

[Milly79]

Not sure Nazeebo is the best advice either...

Q is rather hard to hit, even with the range, IMO.
W can literally fuck your team over so hard.
E is very unreliable.

 

[Vimes]

Have they given out cheerleader Kerrigan yet?

I guess I didn't win.

FWIW I redeemed my heroes of the dorm code and it showed up as "CHEERLEADER KERRIGAN REDEEMED BEFORE TRANSITION" or something like that. It doesn't show in the game and clearly isn't gonna be available before 2.0. So that may affect the timing of giveaways. (I assume your comment is related to the pickem.)

 

[Dice]

Got 10k gold... hmmm... Probius, Valeera, Zul'jin, Varian, Alarak, or Kharazim...

 

[kirblar]

Got 10k gold... hmmm... Probius, Valeera, Zul'jin, Varian, Alarak, or Kharazim...

Hold till you see Nexus Challenge 2.0.

Karazhim for sure of those options tho.

 

[Alur]

Def good advice to wait and see what Nexus Challenge 2.0 brings. Could be another handful of heroes...or the same ones.

 

[Kioshen]

A little off topic but apparently I'm ready to try a MOBA on a phone for some weird reason. Anybody tried one that was good enough? (No Milly I will not play Force Arena).

 

[Milly79]

Vainglory and Mobile Legends are good.

VG has the Blizzard polish, and ML is a bit more cartooney and faster paced.

 

[Kioshen]

Thanks I'll check those out !

Back on topic, in the EU open division, I don't remember which team did it but they combined Gul'Dan with Lunara with an interesting effect. GD took curse of exhaustion at 7, I think they had Joh as a tank and lunara took vines / unfair advantage. The other team had Anub and Stiches as front liners but the amount of damage Lunara was able to push was just ludicrous post 13. I've never seen health bars of tanks literally melt that fast.

--------

For flowchart people, here's a neat one that shows the relations between the new currencies in HotS 2.0.

 

[Milly79]

ML is closer to hots. All of this is IIRC, so maybe Alur can correct me.

ML: 5v5, can't remember if there's talents. There are items, but you can get them on the go. Faster gameplay. 15~ minute games on average. 3 lanes.

VG: 3v3, slower gameplay, have to go back for items, 1 lane and a jungle, there's a 1 lane with no jungle mode that is 10-15 minutes, but normal games are 20-25.

 

[Alur]

And Familie thought OW GAF was bad, check out this novel on mobile MOBAs lol

A little off topic but apparently I'm ready to try a MOBA on a phone for some weird reason. Anybody tried one that was good enough? (No Milly I will not play Force Arena).

Force Arena isn't a MOBA. It's like having a MOBA hero with one ability while playing Clash Royale on a side-to-side map instead of top down. As for mobile MOBAs, the two Milly suggested are the best we found. They have some similarities but are ultimately pretty different in how they play or function.

Vainglory:

3v3 MOBA that features last hitting, items, laner/jungler/support, small map that you actually use all of and it's goddamn beautiful

PROS:

• Gorgeous models and maps
• Skins which are, by and large, Blizzard quality
• Free rotation
• Three different modes to play - 3v3, 3v3 ranked (draft), and 3v3 Battle Royale
• Battle Royale is 10-15 minute games and allows you to play any hero, similar to Brawl, without owning them
• Controls are pretty fluid
• Jungling/support is a real thing
• No chat in game so you can't get trolled with words, only pings
• Vainglory has an actual pro scene with some decent presentation and big name teams in (TSM is there, for example) their leagues, it's supported well by SMC, and it's fun to watch/learn from. They also have Fourcourtjester last I checked if you were a fan of him in HOTS.

CONS:

• Heroes are pretty expensive, as are skins
• Some issues with latency if you're not on a strong connection
• Full games take 17-25 minutes - basically HOTS length or more on average
• Items that are activatable are a bit of a pain to use (IMO)
• Jungling/support is a real thing...also a con because no one wants to do it, and it will fuck your team in the draft/pick screen because some heroes are flat terrible at it
• Higher skill floor to be decent starting out and toxicity (in the form of ping spam) is a bit higher because of that

Mobile Legends:

5v5 MOBA which is basically pocket sized League of Legends in art style and approach with laning but no last hitting, gold and items.

PROS:

• Games take 10-15 minutes on average, faster paced in every way
• Heroes fill that "fantasy" mold that Dota 2 loves aka you can hard carry like a motherfucker
• You can hard carry like a motherfucker (wanted to put that in twice, cause it's awesome)
• Items can be purchased while still on the map without returning (can use predetermined builds or setup your own in the menus)
• Map is more or less a carbon copy of League map in size/setup
• Lots of free stuff given away
• Heroes/skins are cheaper
• Lower skill floor for entry despite what I said above
• Constant skirmishing/1v1ing/team fighting more like HOTS
• You can play people from around the world, and the game tries to match regions against each other (ie: USA + Canada vs European countries or USA vs Brazil or USA vs Mexico)
• Latency/lag was never an issue for me with this game, connection was good

CONS:

• Graphically the game is like League for mobile while VG is polished like Dota 2/HOTS for mobile (it still looks alright tho, IMO)
• While you can hard carry, the enemy can too and your teammates will feed
• Lots of behind the scenes/in the menus tweaks to your heroes' power level like in Dota 2/League similar to runes or whatever
• Support is a growing subclass in game, but jungling is sort of a "do it when you can" thing. Only certain heroes do it extensively, so that part of the map is mostly left alone til later levels
• There were a couple bugs when I last played it 2 or 3 months ago with the client

That's some of it or all I can remember at any rate. They are both fun. If you want a real mobile experience and some quick fun, you want to play Mobile Legends or just Battle Royale in VG. If you want something to dedicate some time to, you could go either way.

 

[Kioshen]

saving quote

Oh wow, you weren't kidding on the write-up. I'll read it during lunch time but thanks for taking the time to type this out. Hopefully, this will be useful to somebody else too but if not I'm sorry for the quick side track in the thread.

 

[brian!]

Oh shiet hgc this weekend had no idea

 

[Alur]

Finally. Way too long of a break.

 

[Kioshen]

It starts out with a bang too with GFE vs T8. Too bad I'll be on the road most of the week-end for easter.

 

[protonium]

.

 

[Milly79]

On the road to BlizzCon? Is that back?!

You reallly went there

 

[Apathy]

So i want to thank the community here for taking the time to have a lively discussion regarding my question. I like the replies and the arguments for and against some of the suggestions.

In case you were wondering, I think I'll wait to spend gold until 2.0 and what if anything comes about with a new nexus challenge

 

[brian!]

💪💪💪
Free week heroes should tide you over np

 

[Apathy]

💪💪💪
Free week heroes should tide you over np

They do, they give me something to play. Although honestly HOTS is my "just one game before going to bed" game between HS and Overwatch having had new stuff that added in the past 2 weeks

 

[Maledict]

Timeline released:

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/heroes20/timeline/

Interesting lookback at the games evolution (quite handy for all the patch notes). Of course, those of us truly leet were in the alpha first.

 

[Milly79]

I don't know what I was expecting

 

[brian!]

Haha that play game picture at the bottom
Na retconned to only 1 blizzcon victory 😲

 

[Alur]

Timeline released

 

[Milly79]

ROFL

 

[Alur]

What the fuck happened to the Twitch homepage

 

[Kioshen]

Nothing much except Amazon.

 

[Alur]

Nothing much? It looks completely different lol

 

[Kioshen]

Looks the same to me except the nav bar at the top. You probably have a special a/b testing i don't know.

 

[kirblar]

Mine looks the same.

 

[Alur]

I'll have to screenshot it when I get home.

 

[Milly79]

Mines different too

 

[scoobs]

They redesigned it. Seems fine to me, better than the shitty old one.

 

[Alur]

From the Open Beta hotfix notes:

Loot Chests

The gold cost to re-roll Epic Loot Chests has been increased to better capture the value of those chests.

Those 55 epic chests gonna cost you a little more dough to reroll, though they didn't specify how much.

 

[evilpigking]

Man you really got to go out of your way to get 30 regen orbs I feel. Obviously easier on small maps like Tomb where you can lane grab or Braxus with the generators but still feels like a chore. Should be decreased to like 24

 

[Kioshen]

• Heroes fill that "fantasy" mold that Dota 2 loves aka you can hard carry like a motherfucker
• You can hard carry like a motherfucker (wanted to put that in twice, cause it's awesome)

I thought you were kidding about this part. I tried another real human match because IDGAF and someone took the shooting blue loli (tutorial hero) so I took the other free dude they gave you at the start. I wasn't clicking on the buy stuff button fast enough. I was doing whatever I felt like on the map it was insane. They gave this guy the same move set as Diablo but with a passive combo like the multiple palm move from kharazim and a go faster button ultimate lmao. I'm going to enjoy this until my MMR gets adjusted. The only reason I died was because I forgot that in LoL style games tower aggros you when you dive below them. Even then, they were all dead 2v1 with tower shots.

Man you really got to go out of your way to get 30 regen orbs I feel. Obviously easier on small maps like Tomb where you can lane grab or Braxus with the generators but still feels like a chore. Should be decreased to like 24

It's supposed to be a hard goal because the payoff is over tuned even as an end game goal. At the very least, it makes you work on your rotations a little more.

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Edit: Bonus clip : This is so perfect. My sides are hurting.