The Lost Vikings patch surprised everyone with an unexpected update to our boy, Jim Raynor, the Marine. What exactly happened here, and why? Let's check it out.

We'll start with a quick look at some of the comments found in the Patch Notes Addendum. If you haven’t really been following any of the updates, the Patch Notes Addendum is a section of the official Heroes of the Storm blog where the developers seek to clarify some of the design changes they bring to the game.



Some of the latest build development for Raynor revolved around his old, now-removed, Trait Lead from the Front, and the Quick Fingers talent. The build hinged upon the massive amount of cooldown reduction provided by Hero and Minion kills to use abilities much more often than they were tuned around. This allowed Raynor to “snowball” team fights after a single fortunate kill, and trade or push very effectively while laning.

Despite the fact that corresponding talents are still available, the build is but a shell of its former self. Part of the old version’s viability came from the fact that Quick Fingers came online at level 4 and provided twice the amount cooldown reduction that Puttin’ on a Clinic did, making it an earlier, stronger choice. On top of this, Puttin’ on a Clinic and A Card to Play now also compete with much stronger choices, making them less appealing at the level 13 and 20 tiers respectively. Coming online when the laning phase is more or less done with has killed an important aspect of the build’s appeal.

In light of this, the claim that “an auto-attack build was the only encouraged and viable option” is just less than true.



Lead from the Front has never required players to master last-hitting, much in the same way that the newer Puttin’ on a Clinic does not currently; the requirement was that of having recently damaged a destroyed entity. This is an important difference, because the latter does not require active management from the player’s part.

I understand and fully agree that, from a design standpoint, last-hitting can prove to be problematic. However, it is undeniable that the mechanic has been, and nowadays remains, a pillar of the AoS-genre ever since its first year 99’ rendition. I can't stress this enough: Be very careful when making design decisions around the lowest common denominator. Especially when considering the fact that the talent did not ever require players to last-hit in the strictest of senses in the first place.



I can't help but feel that Lead from the Front was taking too much blame for Raynor's lacking “easy to learn, hard to master” design. I'll explain why shortly, after we have a look at a succinct summary of his skillset:

• - Advanced Optics (Trait): Passive bonus to range.
  
  
• - Penetrating Round (Q): Skillshot line damage and knockback. 12 sec cd.
  
• - Inspire (W): Area of effect attack speed buff. 15 sec cd.
  
• - Adrenaline Rush (E): Passive conditional healing. 45 sec cd.
  
  
• - Hyperion (Heroic I): Large area of effect damage.
  
• - Raynor’s Raiders (Heroic II): Targeted damage-dealing summons.
  

The first thing that strikes me is that Adrenaline Rush is entirely passive. Raynor is the only Hero to feature a passive skill as part of his Q, W or E abilities.

The second thing that is worthy of mention is that there’s only one ability that requires some form of "advanced" player input: Penetrating Round. Every other skill can more or less simply be used in the general vicinity of combat with a certain degree of success.

I believe that therein truly lie Raynor’s design issues. If the developers wish to present this character as the de-facto “easy-hard” example, they’ll need to further develop his "hard" side by adding depth to his skillset. Inspire and Adrenaline Rush would be good places to start.



I sincerely believe that this change is being attributed too much importance in terms of the character depth than it provides. It's also self-evident, in the sense that none of your Hero's stats (health, damage, speed...) never really require any prior knowledge to make use of. And in the sense that, yes, better players are capable of making better use of their stats. Obviously - they're better players! But the variable at play here is the player's skill, not the bonus's depth breadth.

Let's have an example of what I mean. Say we added something extreme to Sonya's Trait, something along the lines of a 100% increase to her health. Could we justify this change by claiming that "the increased health allows her to make more dangerous plays, which helps new players, but also, better players that can make use of their experience to exploit the stats increase"? No! Of course not! We're just arbitrarily making the Hero better relative to everybody else; the improved playability is simply a byproduct of a raw value of the buff - and not its depth!

Traits should be about defining your character. They should be about giving them something more than you can give them through sheer stats alone. They should make links between your Hero’s story, lore or personality and their gameplay. Advanced Optics just doesn't do that. Especially since the tooltip is outright wrong - Raynor doesn't have 20% more range than other ranged Heroes - Nova's range is just as high from level 1, and a plethora of other Heroes can increase their own range as games progress!



I appreciate this, however, these talents just aren't nearly as good as they once were. They both used to be "free", in that they were caked into his original Trait. They didn't have to compete with other level 13 and 20 talents. They could be improved (read: doubled in power) through a level 4 talent, Quick Fingers. And last but not least, they kicked in as soon as the loading screen was over to go and do some shooting. This is huge.



I just always assumed that Banshees functioned the way they did (right-click to attack) because it closely mimicked the Starcraft, and because it differentiated the skill from other summoning skills (Ultralisk and Mutalisks comes to mind). Nothing in their control ever struck me as confusing, if not for the generalized clunkiness that came with being unable to control them individually. They should now be easier to utilize, but this comes at the cost of skillset diversity.

Raynor's win rate over the last 7 days

Next, we’re going to take a look at the actual patch notes.



From reading the Patch Notes Addendum we knew that one of the revamp goals was to push Raynor away from his perceived mandatory auto-attack build. This Basic Attack damage reduction actually made Raynor the lowest auto-attack damage per second dealing ranged assassin, bar Nova and Jaina. The removal of Searing Attacks, and the nerf to Inspire (15% damage and 15% attack speed > 25% attack speed) only further widen the gap. Before the patch, Raynor could be built as the highest damage dealing Hero. His drawbacks were that he took a while to really get going, and was rather easy to bully around due to his lack of an escape skill.

I’m fully aware that raw numbers don’t mean everything. However, looking at the rest of the patch notes, this damage loss isn't really made up for aside from the Double Barreled talent, and to an extent, Confident Aim. We'll talk about them soon.



Thematically, these make sense from the whole Jimmy “leadership” standpoint. However, the recent changes to Mercenary Lord, requiring proximity, made it an extremely bad choice for anyone, including Raynor. As for Bribe, it only really sees play on Brightwing, Falstad (less) and Murky. The common factor between these three Heroes is their map-wide mobility, something Raynor lacks. Raynor’s Recruitment, while objectively better than Bribe, unfortunately competes with Give Me More, a crux of Raynor’s survival.



Confident Aim has become the new go-to pick. I kinda like it, too - it just rewards you for hitting stuff, and the cooldown reduction is significant. It competes with Focused Attack, which is undertuned, Vampiric Assault, which isn't very good anymore due to the auto-attack being more or less dead, and Activated Rush, which also feels undertuned.

As for Hamstring Shot, it comes off as underwhelming. The slow is lengthy, but rather weak (Frost Shot, an equivalent talent, slows by 40% for 2 seconds on a 8 sec cooldown).

Double Barreled has also become a go-to pick. Partly because it's really good, partly because it synergizes with every other Penetrating Round-related talents, and partly because everything else on that tier is... ehh... yeah. I talked about Puttin’ on a Clinic earlier, so no need to go over that one. Giant Killer is just what it’s always been. I don't think it can compete with an extra instant 400-800 line damage that knockbacks and stuns later on. And as for Steel Resolve, well… we'll talk about it below.

Two barrels, better that one.




25% extra attack speed is good. More 25% attack speed is better. However, the uptime increase isn't that significant - about 30%, not accounting for Adrenaline Rush triggering (which could overlap anyway). Also, Double Barreled is simply too good to pass.

As for Activated Rush... it's okay, if you feel like you're going to need to heal every 30 seconds. It'll save you. But otherwise, the pick is dead. There's just no other way of putting it. Adrenaline Rush lacks the offensive versatility of a mobility skill.



This is the other half of what Raynor's old Trait was - minus being able to benefit from allied deaths. I personally find it weird and unwieldy. Let me explain why: If you somehow wipe out your enemy's team without a single loss, great! 50 seconds off your cooldown that you probably just used. Also, you're going to win the match right away because "there's no one left to stop you, ha-ha!". If the opposite happens, and your team is wiped out, well... the talent didn't really help out. And if some kind of freak accident happens where 8 people die across both teams, you'll pretty much be stuck waiting for a minute before you can make any pushing progress. Which means that your Heroic's going to be back up in time for another fight anyway. Nexus Frenzy and Bolt of the Storm pay off instantly.



A fine counter to ETC and Muradin. However, I doubt it'll see much play. The Double Barreled Raynor meta benefits too much from Bullseye to skip.



The old version of this talent provided a 33% damage increase, whereas this one is more like 50%. This is a buff, however, it isn't as safe a pick as Bolt of the Storm, and probably doesn't provide as much damage as Nexus Frenzy.



This is the highlight of the update, giving Hyperion an interesting sieging niche. Scorched Earth's power is very hard to evaluate (on top of being seemingly random), and most players including myself have shied away from the talent at the benefit, once again, of the fail-safe Nexus Frenzy.

In conclusion

This update’s goal was to offer more diversity in Raynor’s build paths. This goal was unfortunately not achieved. The update has also incidentally shed some light on some of the design issues that affect the Hero’s design as well as the talent system as a whole. Furthermore, Raynor’s relatively recent competitive resurgence as a glass-cannon was completely smothered. He makes for a good introductory character due to his ease of ability management. However, given that positioning is such a vital concept to master in the AoS-genre in general, his lack of mobility actually makes him one of the harder Heroes to play at even a modest level