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[Maledict]

To be fair, I think every hero feeling OP is probably a good thing for the game. I know Dota tries to do that a bit, and it's good when every hero makes you go 'cooool'.

Personally I don't mind Valera that much. Her effectiveness really depends on whom I'm playing - some heroes she absolutely butchers, whereas others I just giggle and run her down. Varian kicks the shit out of her for example, and Nazeepo post 13 also laughs a lot with superstition. She seems okay to me (as okay as a stealth hero can be).

I do think most people play her wrong though. She's not a ganker like zeratul or nova, coming at you from the side. I've always feared her the most when she's played as a melee brawler who co-ordinates her cc with her team. She's also frightfully good at stopping other melee - Illidan or Anubarak five in, and then she unloads her cc kit on them.

 

[scoobs]

I've found that her silence out of stealth absolutely wrecks just about everyone, particularly that poor Illidan. He just stands there like "wait what do I do?"

I think in a drafted environment she can be easily handled, but there is no stopping her in quick match. No fucking way. The enemy team might win the game by cancer pushing with Azmo and Xul all game (how I lost that one), but you're gonna fucking murder everybody and practically never die. At no point did I feel like I could have died. The only death came at the end trying to save the last temple cuz my atrocious team had already all fed their last feeds.

 

[Maledict]

I've found that her silence out of stealth absolutely wrecks just about everyone, particularly that poor Illidan. He just stands there like "wait what do I do?"

I think in a drafted environment she can be easily handled, but there is no stopping her in quick match. No fucking way. The enemy team might win the game by cancer pushing with Azmo and Xul all game (how I lost that one), but you're gonna fucking murder everybody and practically never die. At no point did I feel like I could have died. The only death came at the end trying to save the last temple cuz my atrocious team had already all fed their last feeds.

Ive beaten her several times in quick match. Anyone with point and click cc really hurts her if you're playing her as a ganker, as she doesn't have zeratuls options to get out. Ultimately when played that way she is good versus the heroes zeratul is good against and bad versus the heroes he's bad against, it feels to me.

Like, if I'm on Kael or Valla, I'm fucking dead. Straight up, she will find me, and will kill me. But Varian is a different matter - as long as I pay attention, when she jumps someone I cc her and she then dies,p.

 

[Kioshen]

I decided I'd go back to Hearthstone and try it out until 2.0 is out........

Nearly pulled a Yoshi and my fist through the monitor.......... God what an awful game.

edit: And I used to pull rank 5 consistently so I'm not terrible by any means.

Well that was a bad idea. Hearthstone as it currently stands is in a real bad place after MSoG. I used to play this game everyday but after ONiK my interest dropped off and MSoG just removed any interest I had in it left. Jade is going to be a problem for the next two years and it's not something I want to be a part of.

To be fair, I think every hero feeling OP is probably a good thing for the game. I know Dota tries to do that a bit, and it's good when every hero makes you go 'cooool'.

That's actually the IceFrog way of balancing things. Just make everything OP so everybody is balanced in some way. That's why you have such long cooldown on abilities. I always laugh a little bit when people were complaining about 2 seconds stuns and not being able to play. The amount of CC in Dota land is staggering.

 

[Ketch]

The only disable in your whole game was xul root.

She's not op

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Like, if I'm on Kael or Valla, I'm fucking dead. Straight up, she will find me, and will kill me. But Varian is a different matter - as long as I pay attention, when she jumps someone I cc her and she then dies,p.

That's 2 assassins with good ways to reveal a Valeera.

 

[scoobs]

A strong front line as well as Tass/Zarya counter her hard, something you don't often find in a quick match environment. I just felt like a god this morning, played 3 games on her after not having touched her since release and I was just butt blasting people left and right.

The ambush talents are absolutely devastating. Really turns her into a terror.

 

[Milly79]

And just so you know, I'm not calling you out, Scoobs.

Valeera is good in the right enviroment, but in no way is she stupid broken. She needs follow up to make her work and she's automatically at a disadvantage vs. the other stealths as she has to toggle her stealth, its 5 seconds longer of a CD vs the other two and she gets revealed a ton easier (in my experiences over 50+ games).

She's hella fun, that's for sure, but when her 3 "good" abilities are based on stealth, if they have any sort of reveal you may as well get ready to smash your keyboard. I have a hard time playing her because she's hardly ever effective and once you get down on levels you're basically doing nothing the rest of the game.

 

[scoobs]

The only disable in your whole game was xul root.

She's not op

Like I said, in a quickmatch environment she's a god. In a draft you can obviously find ways to counter her just like with any hero. She's a pub stomper, and I'm not sure I've ever felt quite this unstoppable on a hero before. Maybe Tassadar post rework week, i jumped like 400 Quickmatch MMR just playing him.

She's also significantly easier to play than someone like Zeratul or Samuro who do basically the same thing she does.

Smoke bomb is probably what makes her so easy to play. You get a get-out-of-jail-free card if you ever actually fuck up enough to the point where you might actually die.

 

[Milly79]

I disagree.

 

[brian!]

She's pretty good on 4/1 maps
Unless you're looking for vp synergy or better single target burst id wager shes a little better than zera on braxis

 

[Ketch]

Like I said, in a quickmatch environment she's a god. In a draft you can obviously find ways to counter her just like with any hero. She's a pub stomper, and I'm not sure I've ever felt quite this unstoppable on a hero before. Maybe Tassadar post rework week, i jumped like 400 Quickmatch MMR just playing him.

She's also significantly easier to play than someone like Zeratul or Samuro who do basically the same thing she does.

Smoke bomb is probably what makes her so easy to play. You get a get-out-of-jail-free card if you ever actually fuck up enough to the point where you might actually die.

Being a QM god is such a dice roll.

You know who else is a QM god? Nova, Zera, Murky, Chogall, Probius, Chromie, Gazlowe, Chen, Zag, butcher, rexxar, hammer, stitches, kerrigan, lili

If the other team doesn't have a (insert necessary tool here), then these heroes run the board. It doesn't make them op, it just means you got lucky.

 

[brian!]

It's a little hard to judge her in qm like im def of the mind that she is budget zera still, but male is right that too many ppl still play her as a ganker or blowup assassin and she's pretty poor at both

I feel like her wr would be up 5-6 percent at least if ppl played her differently

 

[Milly79]

Being a QM god is such a dice roll.

You know who else is a QM god? Nova, Zera, Murky, Chogall, Probius, Chromie, Gazlowe, Chen, Zag, butcher, rexxar, hammer, stitches, kerrigan, lili

If the other team doesn't have a (insert necessary tool here), then these heroes run the board. It doesn't make them op, it just means you got lucky.

Bingo

 

[scoobs]

Being a QM god is such a dice roll.

You know who else is a QM god? Nova, Zera, Murky, Chogall, Probius, Chromie, Gazlowe, Chen, Zag, butcher, rexxar, hammer, stitches, kerrigan, lili

If the other team doesn't have a (insert necessary tool here), then these heroes run the board. It doesn't make them op, it just means you got lucky.

I don't consider almost any of those heroes QM gods. And did I actually say she was OP in this morning rant? I said she was fucking dumb (which she is) and I said she's a pub stomper (which she is). I don't believe I said she's actually OP, but rather the perfect hero to play when you want to destroy everything in quick match. Although maybe I did and I just forgot, it wouldn't be entirely untrue given the right circumstances

And I disagree that she's not a blow up hero. She totally is with both ambush talents. You can't always open that way, but if some dumby is laning in the late game you can dispose of them in 1 or 2 seconds. I've even found plenty of windows for ambush openings within team fights where enemies are somewhat bunched up. She's not gonna burst you down as fast as Rewind Zeratul at 20, but it's pretty comparable.

 

[Milly79]

It was more so you implied it, but we know logic is hard for you.

 

[Altairre]

The reason I like playing Zeratul more is that he brings a lot more utility. If my team is bad at soaking, I can help out with that fairly effectively. I can initiate or save people with VP and I can dive to kill people in situations where I would just die with Valeera. Smoke bomb is nice but it's not going to do much when the enemy team collapses on you. That being said it is fun to insta-delete people who are out of position late game with the ambush talents and it doesn't really require any skill.

 

[Maledict]

That's 2 assassins with good ways to reveal a Valeera.

A good Valeera uses the 1 second of unrevealability to get close and kill you though. That's the difference between people who play her as a zeratul and people who play her more as a brawler though. That 1 second is there for a reason.

 

[Maledict]

It was more so you implied it, but we know logic is hard for you.

You've given me shit over the last year for being negative all the time, do we have to have the Personel attacks? Even as jokes they don't look good to people who don't know the thread and us, and we do want to bring new people into the game.

 

[brian!]

She has good tools for blowup, like both her and zera need help early (tho zera is still much better than her post-4 at solo killing/catching ppl) that's not anything special, but for some reason blizz decided that she can't mount while stealthed or use her gap closer, so in the end she is incredibly easy to stop. Realistically it's much more efficient to stealth mid-combat for the unrevealable and then chain ccs with that.

Like yeah she's great at picking off ppl that arent watching but i mean this isnt really a character strength, more of a player weakness

 

[Kioshen]

All this zeratul talk makes me want to try him again. Will probably try him in ptr as a stress free environment.

 

[Milly79]

You've given me shit over the last year for being negative all the time, do we have to have the Personel attacks? Even as jokes they don't look good to people who don't know the thread and us, and we do want to bring new people into the game.

It's Scoobs, who speaks in only in absolutes. He plays 3 games of QM with multiple heroes and claims they're dumb, OP, etc. Do we want new players seeing that? So when they go in and get right fucked then it's all Scoobs fault?

Seriously though, I'm done arguing with him. It's pointless and his opinion is the only right in this world, apparently.

 

[brian!]

Yeah zeratul is fun as hell and it's highly rewarding to get gud with him since he's one of the few playmakers in the game. I had a game with him recently where i popped off late game and won the game for the team but i need to check out the footage and see if it's actually how i remember lol

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Landing that 4 man VP, Kreygasm.

 

[Alur]

Is today the AMA or is that tomorrow?

 

[Milly79]

Today I think.

 

[Alur]

I'm curious how they will address the master skin folks and the vet reward outcry. Seemed like they thought the taunts were gonna solve the first issue, but those things are a fucking joke. If it's gonna be some kind of visual BM, probably shouldn't have introduced sprays in the same patch (basically negating the need), and if you're dead set on taunts the taunt should be an action by the character itself...not some goofy shield over their head which clashes with nearly every hero. /end rant

For issue two, I expect the PR response of "this is what's best for the game" and maybe, maybe something like a better scaling of levels gained to boxes rewarded. As I said on the last page, the fact that I have one account which will be hero level 922 getting 69 boxes, and another account that is level 370 and will get 58 is kind of fucked up. The scaling on that is way off. That said, I don't expect them to give anyone much more if they give anything more at all. There seemed to be just enough people calling those upset about it entitled for them to brush it off if they would like.

EDIT: Also, I'm ready for that Cassia lyfe and to see how good or badly she shakes out.

 

[Kioshen]

Is today the AMA or is that tomorrow?

Wednesday, April 5 at 11:30 a.m. PDT

I'm a little bummed about 2.0 because overall it's a really great change for the game but there are all those little paper cuts that add up to being annoying and tarnish the whole thing a bit.

 

[Alur]

Well, I've been the unofficial GAF champion of vet rewards being busted but even considering that, I'm still mega hyped for 2.0.

I intensely dislike that old stuff or seasonal stuff will be locked in loot crates (and IIRC, the Prime Evil skin is already loot crate locked), but if you come to HOTS at the end of this month or you were someone who didn't spend a ton of money anyway, you're gonna reap the rewards of this change. Doubly so if you had taken a break or hadn't leveled up too many different heroes. For that fact, at least, I can live with the loot boxes. Plus, getting something after you level is fun in Overwatch. I think it will be more fun in HOTS (but maybe that's just me).

I can also live with loot boxes because of what they give us; we got a nice skin dump, we're finally getting a lot of portraits we should've probably always had, etc etc. We'll likely get a lot more stuff a lot more often...which can be good or bad, I guess, but I'll see at as good for now. Then there's the potential promise of finally, finally getting some esports/HGC recognition in game. Put me some fucking GFE/DIG/FNATIC loot in those boxes baby. I want a DIG banner or spray. Let me troll Milly with an NVT portrait. All of that stuff will be great for the game, and for the game that the pros play within the game.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

I just have a wait and see approach going. I was excited to try out 2.0 but I never leveled much on PTR so it was pretty tame.
I'm barely the game as is right now so I don't feel like spending that time on PTR.

 

[Alur]

I would also really like to see a blog post from Blizzard breaking down the different portrait frames for leveling in 2.0. On PTR so far we've seen green for 100 and blue for 200, but no one any higher. I'm curious what they look like higher up, and how they change a-la Overwatch. Still a bit miffed they no longer show the level on load screen.

 

[Kioshen]

I would also really like to see a blog post from Blizzard breaking down the different portrait frames for leveling in 2.0. On PTR so far we've seen green for 100 and blue for 200, but no one any higher. I'm curious what they look like higher up, and how they change a-la Overwatch. Still a bit miffed they no longer show the level on load screen.

Say no more fam

 

[Alur]

Where'd you pull that from? I don't even see the blue one we saw on PTR on there from that guy who was level 212. It was just like the green one with 1 gem, except it was all blue.

 

[protonium]

.

 

[Milly79]

Where'd you pull that from? I don't even see the blue one we saw on PTR on there from that guy who was level 212. It was just like the green one with 1 gem, except it was all blue.

Need to get your eyes checked breh 😂

 

[Alur]

It was in the 2.0 blog post on the HotS site.

Yeah, I see it now. But a bunch of us talked about those things on PTR and were wondering WTF it was. Why didn't anyone remember this then?

Need to get your eyes checked breh ��

Do you see a blue one in that image with only one gem? Cause I don't lol

We saw this border:

but it was blue/blue gem.

 

[Milly79]

No, I meant the in-game thing you're talking about. I remember questioning you that match because I don't even remember seeing a blue.

 

[Alur]

We saw it two different times. A blue twice and a green several other times. Once both green and blue were on the same team. Maybe it was a bug or something.

 

[Alur]

Cassia is live.

 

[Milly79]

No changes in the patch notes

 

[Kioshen]

Yeah, I see it now. But a bunch of us talked about those things on PTR and were wondering WTF it was. Why didn't anyone remember this then?



Do you see a blue one in that image with only one gem? Cause I don't lol

We saw this border:

but it was blue/blue gem.

I did tell you it was level badges prestige style but oh well. You even checked out of game later on on the stats screen after a match.

 

[Maledict]

I really want to buy and play Cassia, as I had a great time with her on the PTR. But there really isn't any point given the changes coming - she'll be 5K cheaper and give lots of loot boxes.

 

[Kioshen]

After watching MFPT's IRL video of the heroes summit coverage, I never realized how much I wanted Deathwing so badly in HotS now.

@Maledict

Kinda sad it has come to this though. I'm also waiting on playing probius for this very reason. I'm just practicing mechanics on my high level heroes in AI game until 2.0 launches.

 

[Alur]

I did tell you it was level badges prestige style but oh well. You even checked out of game later on on the stats screen after a match.

This was even before you were online. We went over it like 3 or 4 times before someone finally checked the profile to verify levels. I'm talking about the blog post specifically, no one seemed to remember it or how it related until now.

I really want to buy and play Cassia, as I had a great time with her on the PTR. But there really isn't any point given the changes coming - she'll be 5K cheaper and give lots of loot boxes.

Yeah, unintended consequence of the vet rewards ruling plus 2.0 month long beta. I am gonna get her on an alt and play her there. Not to worried about the loot boxes for that. Def wanna save the ones for her for my main account, though, especially considering how few and far between the quick/easy levels will be for us.

 

[Ketch]

So, do they have a date for 2.0 going live or we just speculating?


Lemme guess, 2 days before I gotta leave for a month

 

[Maledict]

April 25th.

EDIT: Alur, which spreadsheet did you use to calculate your new hero level? I need to do that to work out if I should be levelling anyone to meet the epic chest threshold...

 

[Alur]

This popped back up on reddit and I still believe this is the best fan made skin idea ever. So fucking good.

EDIT: Alur, which spreadsheet did you use to calculate your new hero level? I need to do that to work out if I should be levelling anyone to meet the epic chest threshold...

I used the leveling conversion rates (ie: 9 converts to 11, 10 converts to 15, etc) from the spreadsheet Ketch linked and just did it manually since we discovered the actual calculations on that spreadsheet were off. So basically I just added up my number of 9's, got the total and multiplied by 2, then the 10's, got the total and multiplied by 5, and so forth.

I haven't seen another spreadsheet, but I would try one out if I found another just to double check.

 

[Alur]

Veteran chest rewards have been improved.

The rare and epic level changes have been discarded and you now gain an epic chest for every 10 levels of experience you've gained.

If you've finished at least one Heroes of the Storm match before 2.0 is released, you're going to receive five Common Loot Chests—but that's just the beginning. Additionally, we've replaced all of the Common and Rare Loot Chests awarded at every 10 and 25 Player Levels (as outlined in our previous announcement) with Epic Loot Chests. Each Epic Loot Chest guarantees at least one item of Epic rarity, or higher, and you'll receive up to 55 of them based on your converted Player Level after the Heroes 2.0 release.

It is a bit unclear to me if that means you can get up to 55 bonus epic chests, or if epic chests are just simply replacing all of the other chests you would have gotten. EDIT: Looks like after rereading it replaces everything. That's neat.

You also get a veteran loot chest for every 100 levels you've gained:

Our most dedicated players will receive special ”Veteran Chests" that contain five coins, rather than four, and guarantee at least one Legendary item per chest. Veteran Chests are a unique type of Loot Chest we've created specifically for our most dedicated players as part of the Heroes 2.0 launch, and cannot be earned through progression in the new system. Like the Epic Loot Chest rewards above, the number of Veteran Chests you will receive is based on your total, converted Player Level in the new progression system.

and a 30-day stimpack.

This is quite a boost by Blizz. I would get 9 vet chests by my count. That's 9 legendary awards...so I'm guaranteed 9 shots at Prime Evil Diablo or at the very least 3600 shards.

 

[kirblar]

QUICK COMPLAIN MORE SO WE GET BETTER STUFFS

No but seriously this is fantastic, especially the free legendary-class stuff.

 

[Alur]

With them giving you epic level chests, your rerolls are also worth way-the-fuck more now. I mean, shit, I've played the last few days with Kerrigan on PTR to use the Cheerleader Kerrigan skin I got...it's epic quality. You're virtually guaranteed to get that with rerolls if you want it.

And I already have had a fair number of rare and epic chests I've rerolled into legendary. We're talking 5-10 already out of probably 42 chests, not counting the legendary items I just lucked into first try. This is some nice stuff by Blizz IMO.

EDIT: Want to add this is one of the two options I asked for. Either improve the quality of the chests we get, or give us the ability to quickly earn chests as well. Option one was the easiest and probably smartest, so I can't complain.