PTR patch notes November 11, 2015 Discussion - Page 2

On November 13 2015 12:40 Foxxan wrote:
Blizzard said the roles sharpened with this change, so not very unexpected if an assassin takes alot of damage.
Did the spells get buffed in the early game? Heals should heal for more etc

On November 12 2015 BlazingRain wrote:
There were a lot of questions about whether or not minions and structures were scaled to accomodate the much stronger level 1 power levels of heroes, and if they were, by how much. After some testing, here's what I was able to determine:

Minions: Minion health values were buffed by 50%. I wasn't able to determine if the per minute scaling or damage values were changed.
Footmen: 600 -> 900
Wizards: 300 -> 450
Archers: 400 -> 600

Structures: It seems tier 1 structures were buffed by 25%, but I was not able to verify fort health numbers to make sure the 25% buff is across the board or not. I wasn't able to determine whether or not tier 2 structures were buffed.
Tier 1 Towers: 3000 -> 3750 health, 100 -> 125 damage
Tier 1 Forts: ? health (assuming 25% stronger), 150 -> 187 damage

These changes alone make early game pushes much stronger. Previously, it took 6 tower shots to kill a full health, first wave footman, 3 for a wizard, and 4 for an archer. Now, it takes 8 to kill a full health footman, 4 for a wizard, and 5 for an archer. While in a real game all 7 initial minions rarely make it to the towers at full health, it still means minions that do get to the towers will drain their ammo much quicker.

But when you add the much stronger heroes into the equation, things get even worse. While minions and structures were buffed by 50% and 25%, respectively, heroes have had their level 1 power levels more than doubled. This trivializes a lot of the early game PvE aspects of the game.

For example, while towers used to be serious threats in the early levels, they're no longer damaging enough to discourage tower dives. Previously, the towers did 50% more damage than the highest level 1 AA in the game (Butcher's), and 9.4% of the health of the tankiest heroes in the game (Azmodan and Stitches). Now, they actually do less damage than the AAs of a few heroes, and only 4.4% of Azmodan or Stitches' new health pools. Azmodan can quite literally take out a tower all by himself right out of the gate and survive (not that that would happen in a live game, but it shows how much weaker they are).

But perhaps even more concerning, early game wave clear is almost completely trivial now. So many heroes can wipe waves out in a few seconds now. To give an example, Kael'thas' empowered Flamestrike now does 370 damage at level 1, up from 153 (an almost 250% increase). So whereas previously an empowered Flamestrike dealt about 25% of a footman's health, it now deals over 41%. You can now cast an empowered Flamestrike, then Living Bomb the wizard, and you'll have killed the wizard, left the archers about a single AA from death, and the footmen very low. Jaina can do even more. To put into perspective how much weaker early game minions are now, when everyone thought Leoric and Johanna had too strong wave clear, Leoric's Skeletal Swing dealt 36.6% of the the footmen's health at level 1, and Johanna's Knight Takes Pawn did 21%. Here's a list of abilities that do as much or more relative minion damage than Leoric's old (pre-nerf) Skeletal Swing at level 1 (note that the numbers were taken from HeroesNexus, and may be off by a few points, but should be generally accurate):

Jaina - Blizzard (435)
Sonya - Whirlwind (415)
Murky - Pufferfish (406)
Kael'thas - Flamestrike (370)
Rehgar - Lightning Shield (358)
Tassadar - Psionic Storm (345)

And a list of abilities that do more relative damage than Johanna's pre-nerf Knight Takes Pawn at level 1:

Zagara - Baneling Barrage (312)
Gazlowe - Deth Lazor (285)
Falstad - Hammerang (276)
Tychus - Frag Grenade (267)
Kerrigan - Impaling Blades (262)
Chen - Keg Smash + Breath of Fire (252)
Raynor - Penetrating Round (250)
Leoric - Skeletal Swing (242)
Artanis - Blade Dash (238)
Johanna - Condemn with Knight Takes Pawn (232)
Gazlowe - Xplodium Charge (221)
Lt. Morales - Displacement Grenade (219)
Tyrande - Lunar Flare (214)
Jaina - Cone of Cold (197)
Zeratul - Cleave (197)
Sylvanas - Shadow Dagger (193)

Basically half the roster has some sort of wave clear that is stronger than Johanna's Knight Takes Pawn (it is important to note that Knight Takes Pawn scales really well and also provides the long stun however). When you add to this the increased death times, a single death early game will probably mean at least a single tower will be taken. More than one death, and a team can do serious damage to a fort. It's hard to tell exactly how early it'll be possible with the lack of coordination and proper matchmaking on the PTR, but I can see forts being taken before level 4, unless teams play extremely conservatively.

And although this is sort of unrelated to this topic, the last thing I want to point out is how much the scaling changes will break some heroes. The one that catches my attention the most, perhaps because I use him a lot, is Leoric. Leoric currently provides a few things, but the most important are perhaps his lane dominance owed to his excellent wave clear, his ability to heavily damage tanks through Drain Hope, and his quick respawns. His wave clear is actually being nerfed with these scaling changes, as Skeletal Swing is only 29% stronger at level 1, while minions were buffed by 50%. This is because Skeletal Swing is one of the most front-loaded abilities in the game right now, and because of this, just scaling down everyone's level 20 power levels means it actually becomes weaker than many wave clear tools permanently. Add to that the questionable nerfs to his tank busting and respawn timer (Drain Essence only reduces the death timer by 10% now instead of 12.5%), and he's going to be much weaker after the next patch goes live. But this points to the fundamental flaw behind the way the scaling is going to be changed.

It seems like the idea was that since the game is relatively balanced right now (which is true), just scaling everyone down from their strongest state would preserve the state of balance. However, the flaw with this is that, while it's true most heroes are pretty balanced right now, they are not balanced at level 20. Simply put,whether it be through talents or raw attribute scaling, there are heroes that are much stronger at level 20 than others. Right now, that's not necessarily a balance issue, as those weaker late game heroes can be stronger earlier. But that gets thrown out the window when all heroes scale the same. Right now, there are roughly three types of heroes: heroes that have strong base stats/kits (like Zagara and Jaina), heroes that scale through strong attribute scaling (Raynor, Thrall), and heroes that scale through powerful talents (Artanis, Murky). What the new scaling system does is make the attribute scaling heroes extremely strong the entire game, and remove the possibility of strong base vs attribute scaling heroes altogether, so the only possibilities are heroes that are strong initially, and heroes that scale through strong talent options. While this decrease in variability is arguably acceptable (I personally don't like it), the larger problem is that there are heroes that, as they exist right now, were designed to have a high initial power level but taper off as the game goes on, and not only are there no buffs coming to those heroes along with these changes in scaling, one is even being nerfed.

I was not a fan of the scaling changes when they were first introduced, and seeing how it's working in the PTR, I fear the game will be completely broken until a massive rebalancing takes place. And that is why I think this patch really should've included at least some changes to deal with the balance issues that scaling everyone to level 20 levels would bring. But what worries me more is I still don't really see the benefit that this change brings. While an early game stomp and snowball can suck right now, DB himself said that many of those stomps are caused by bad matchmaking, and I wonder why they didn't try to roll out the matchmaking changes first to see if that reduces the number of early stomps overall. I get that Cho'Gall was a really snowbally hero, but so is Lost Vikings, and since the nerfs they haven't really broken the game. And, there are cases when a snowball really should just happen. While comebacks are great, and the fact that this game has comeback mechanics (sorry IGN) is a good thing, I don't think the game needs more comeback possibilities. Sometimes teams are just outmatched, and there's nothing wrong with the better team dominating the weaker one.

On November 14 2015 00:09 Leolio wrote:
Great chart, thank you.

Illidan is going to demand even more skill early game now, it's a good thing. But in Illidan free week will be hell. Even more I mean. Comparatively Butcher needed that buff so why not. Time'll tell if he becomes unstoppable.

I hate the fact that more people will play Nova as it'll mean less chance for me to draft her. And with the gathering power buff, she's the new Zeratul. Only sexier. That level 7 will hurt really bad now. Looking forward to try it.

Tyrande's early game buff is really strange. They should nerf her she's a bit too powerful right now. Maybe trueshot aura is a bit of an overkill now that she's so powerful with many viable builds.

edit: also glad Murky got an early game buff. But the fact that death timers increase buff him a lot relatively to all other heroes. He's going to become OP with that, especially with Trace's 1v1 build (trading yourself for a kill will be even more worthy).

On November 14 2015 05:53 MotherFox wrote:
In other news, someone on reddit is saying that if you control all 6 towers on towers of doom your core starts firing at the other team's core constantly.

https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/3snfl3/towers_of_doom_the_hidden_stomp_mechanic/

Seems like this would minorly address some of the concerns about being dependent on shrines to just win the game.

On November 15 2015 06:00 MotherFox wrote:
After trying out the new map, I am super confused on why they added back in the cores. During blizcon they claimed the map used to be "first team to 40 points", but that was anticlimactic. So they added back in the cores.

Now when they say that, I ASSUMED they meant a core with shields. But instead its a core with 40 hit points, and every time you earn a point the enemy core loses 1 hp. This is the EXACT SAME as first team to 40 wins. wtf?

Also, the comebacks thing. If our team has 24 hp on our core and the enemy has 2 hp on the core, I don't see how they can stage a massive comeback after a teamwipe even if both teams are level 30. Unless taking all six forts also basically insta kills the enemy team...

On November 15 2015 06:29 SC2John wrote:


Yeah, comebacks are almost entirely related to whether you happen to win a team fight during or right before an altar fight; if you win a team fight and there's no altar up, you don't really gain anything. At the same time, there's also no way to get around a composition that doesn't scale well into the late game. If your Heroes start to fall off by level 16 and you can't win direct team fights, you just lose on Towers of Doom -- there's nothing real to threaten by split pushing.

On November 15 2015 07:00 MotherFox wrote:


Well, even if altars are up---- if you are behind and win a team fight, if three altars come up you can win a max of 21 points, which is only half a core. Imagine a regular game at level 30 where you can get a half a core max, and get no permanent advantage otherwise.

To come back, you really just have to dominate the late game hard with perpetual team wipes.