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...
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.
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.
You can also push the bottom mercs to core (3 x 2) plus the top merc (3) and the Boss (4 or 7?). Plus if you have full control of all the keeps, you get a free shot to core every few seconds which can takedown the enemy core pretty quickly. It's not as straightforward as other maps, but a full team wipe in the late game is still detrimental especially if the team knows how to capitalize it.
Regarding the K/D/A debate, I saw someone post a pretty good idea on Reddit earlier today that basically said, rather than the last hit being the person that gets the kill.....just give it to whoever did the most damage to the hero. Sure, your Johanna/Muradin/Uther/Malfurions aren't going to be stacking kills....but those heroes aren't designed to get kills anyway...so it shouldn't matter.
The bottom line is, with this type of mechanic, all specialists/assassins are encouraged to hold nothing back AND focus fire 1 hero (rather than spreading their damage everywhere for stat padding).
I think it is something worth talking about honestly.
It is not very often that focus fire and killing off heroes is a bad play in my experience, also looking at progames.
Possibly only when ultimates could be used for zoning, and some talent/hero choices, but still, what are we afraid of? Even chasing kills, it is much easier to get them if you are playing with the team and setting up teamfights.
Maybe I would have understood better if I had experienced carrying and kill-steals from other mobas, but I honestly can't see the problem...
Its unclear how this plays out but the problem could be that people care about the kill stat so they play to get kills and complain if they don't get them. How do you play for kills? You hold back. Either by saving high dmg spells or by standing cloaked at the sidelines until someone drops low.
If two people who care about the killstat participate in a kill one of them will not be happy and might complain because of course he is the one deserving of this kill. Even if no one complains one of those guys will be unhappy whereas right now everyone will be happy. And even if people don't hold back the others will/might perceive it as such adding another thing to complain about.
I don't think it will affect the higher ranks much but it might be a bad thing at the lower leagues. Also people already play for the scoreboard for example by suiciding into enemies to get some dmg done and complain a lot about everything. So all in all probably not a big deal but a bit risky for little gain.
meh I'm not sure why the felt the need to rebalance everything ... the game seemed to be in a pretty good place balance wise and gametime wise, we saw a lot of different heroes at blizzcon (even though there are obvious power picks, this is the case in any moba).
The early game being more punishing isn't a good thing imo as the game could get way too snowbally (a problem that already exists on haunted mines and blackheart)
Did they at least explain why they decided to start from scratch again ?
On November 15 2015 19:52 Slydie wrote: It is not very often that focus fire and killing off heroes is a bad play in my experience, also looking at progames.
Possibly only when ultimates could be used for zoning, and some talent/hero choices, but still, what are we afraid of? Even chasing kills, it is much easier to get them if you are playing with the team and setting up teamfights.
Maybe I would have understood better if I had experienced carrying and kill-steals from other mobas, but I honestly can't see the problem...
It's really hard to tell how it will affect people other than just projecting that some people will be petty about kills because it inflates their ego. Unlike in other MOBAs like LoL or Dota where kills are directly related to how much gold that person has and how powerful they are, kills in Heroes are pretty much irrelevant compared to assists, so it doesn't really change anything for people who already know that. We'll just have to see. Overall, I like the change because I think "takedowns" was a very nebulous term to begin with, but since kills vs assists have literally no effect on the game, I can see why they did it in the first place.
On November 15 2015 20:41 RouaF wrote: meh I'm not sure why the felt the need to rebalance everything ... the game seemed to be in a pretty good place balance wise and gametime wise, we saw a lot of different heroes at blizzcon (even though there are obvious power picks, this is the case in any moba).
The early game being more punishing isn't a good thing imo as the game could get way too snowbally (a problem that already exists on haunted mines and blackheart)
Did they at least explain why they decided to start from scratch again ?
They did, actually. They said it stemmed from their development of Cho'Gall because they were having troubles balancing him so he didn't create snowball effects, both in winning and losing, so they decided to go back to the drawing board and think of ways to make power curves a little bit smoother so that late game Heroes could be just as relevant early on and you wouldn't have snowballs built on early and mid game power spikes.
Is that actually solid reasoning? I don't know. From what I've experienced in the PTR, it's a very different game from levels ~1-13, but afterwards, it starts to feel normal again. We'll have to see how things turn out, but I agree; I thought we were in a really nice place balance-wise at BlizzCon.
EDIT: They also claimed that too much power came from level leads. In other words, a team that was 3 levels ahead (regardless of talents) was almost twice as powerful. By giving more early game stats to Heroes at default, they were able to equalize the difference in levels so that you would only be ~30-40% stronger 3 levels up.
I just don't see the point of the detailed stats during the game. They are only used for whining. Kill stat is irrelevant to know during a game for anyone who knows how to play but only becomes a stupid argument for players who do. Similar to the damage stat now, somehow bad players think that is the most important. Just like the newbs that cry out in draft 'but we need more damage' when you're taking sonya instead of jaina when we already have kael and nazeebo for example.
I'd honestly think the game would just be better if the stat screen during the game was gone, it's not used by better players as it's only an annoying distraction. Then after game you should simply have very detailed stats with graphs over time even with even the option of 'start replay at this point' so you could see a huge peek in xp gained for example and quickly get the replay started to just rewatch that critical fight.
Mostly I miss the relevant stats, the stats at the moment don't learn you anything really. While i'd love to have stats like healing on non-supports, knowing how much activateable talents did like protective shield, first aid, stoneskin etc. Having xp separated by unique xp would be good too (so the sum of everyone's unique xp would actually be the team xp). In other words if you soak a lane alone you get the full value, if you dual or triple soak it's shared unlike now. Also information on CCs would be nice to know, how much damage did blinds prevent, how much did i stun etc.
All after game though, during game I couldn't care less for anything and I don't like (bad) players finding excuses in them why player X sucks or they rock.
On November 15 2015 20:41 RouaF wrote: meh I'm not sure why the felt the need to rebalance everything ... the game seemed to be in a pretty good place balance wise and gametime wise, we saw a lot of different heroes at blizzcon (even though there are obvious power picks, this is the case in any moba).
The early game being more punishing isn't a good thing imo as the game could get way too snowbally (a problem that already exists on haunted mines and blackheart)
Did they at least explain why they decided to start from scratch again ?
EDIT: They also claimed that too much power came from level leads. In other words, a team that was 3 levels ahead (regardless of talents) was almost twice as powerful. By giving more early game stats to Heroes at default, they were able to equalize the difference in levels so that you would only be ~30-40% stronger 3 levels up.
From what i understood, this change had nothing to do with cho'gall. The game snowballs to easily, thats why they want to change it. Right now two levels ahead=almost 40% stronger(their words). This change makes two levels ahead=i believe 12% only or something so its a major difference.
Personally i find it very good they are changing it. Although iam unsure about the consequences hope it turns out good!
On November 15 2015 20:41 RouaF wrote: meh I'm not sure why the felt the need to rebalance everything ... the game seemed to be in a pretty good place balance wise and gametime wise, we saw a lot of different heroes at blizzcon (even though there are obvious power picks, this is the case in any moba).
The early game being more punishing isn't a good thing imo as the game could get way too snowbally (a problem that already exists on haunted mines and blackheart)
Did they at least explain why they decided to start from scratch again ?
EDIT: They also claimed that too much power came from level leads. In other words, a team that was 3 levels ahead (regardless of talents) was almost twice as powerful. By giving more early game stats to Heroes at default, they were able to equalize the difference in levels so that you would only be ~30-40% stronger 3 levels up.
From what i understood, this change had nothing to do with cho'gall. The game snowballs to easily, thats why they want to change it. Right now two levels ahead=almost 40% stronger(their words). This change makes two levels ahead=i believe 12% only or something so its a major difference.
Personally i find it very good they are changing it. Although iam unsure about the consequences hope it turns out good!
the "snowballing effect" was an issue that they discovered while trying to balance Cho'Gall into the game, according to the developers.
I think its a good idea to adress core issues while making stat growth consistent. Previously it was hard to figure out what scales well or badly towards the late game. But i don't think the game was too snowbally. Anyway, i like that they are willing to make big changes, and if you gonna do those, the sooner the better.
On November 15 2015 14:44 Perseverance wrote: Regarding the K/D/A debate, I saw someone post a pretty good idea on Reddit earlier today that basically said, rather than the last hit being the person that gets the kill.....just give it to whoever did the most damage to the hero. Sure, your Johanna/Muradin/Uther/Malfurions aren't going to be stacking kills....but those heroes aren't designed to get kills anyway...so it shouldn't matter.
I think there's no perfect solution, and this one is interesting. But from my experience securing kills is more valuable than spreading damage. Usually when opponents are able to save their ass several times when being almost dead, we end up losing. That's why I always want to play Nova, it's because I don't let them escape. But it comes at a cost of course. You can compare that to burst heals from Uther or Karhazim. They are often more valuables than big numbers heals from sustain healers.
I like the idea that we will no longer see the healer with a 30 - 0 Kill/Death ratio because he's here all the time. He can be the best healer in the world and go 0 - 0 and 30 assists, I'm fine with that as long as he saves our asses. That'll also help discriminate warriors like ETC who rarely secures a kill from Leorics who actually kills. It'll help see people that a warrior can have more value than soaking damage and not dying. And we need that heal column for everyone. They have also split the exp. This is even more stupid than the current KD ratio system. It's more important even when playing Abathur and TLV.
Grubby's thoughts on the new scaling changes. In general, he's being pretty proactive this morning, posting two blogs on his site and watching all of the Gold Series Heroes League...just an observation. Also, what a handsome man. /fanboy rant
Grubby's thoughts on the new scaling changes. In general, he's being pretty proactive this morning, posting two blogs on his site and watching all of the Gold Series Heroes League...just an observation. Also, what a handsome man. /fanboy rant
I'm a fan too. ^^ He's one of the best to explain stuff and he's not a douche. I guess his one-stop guides topic here was closed but he's making great tutorials. The one with Nova taught me everything I needed to know to play competitively with no experience whatsoever. Glad the patch hits tomorrow. Can't wait to see what it changes. To me it basically means Nova doesn't gets her powerspike at level 13 but is good from level 1.
Cho'Gall should be released this Tuesday, starting the Cho'Gall virus. Anyone who went to BlizzCon or bought a virtual ticket will get Cho'Gall for free. They will then have a quest (that rewards a hefty amount of gold) to play games with people who don't have Cho'Gall yet. Players that don't have Cho'Gall can also earn him for free by pairing up a certain number of times.