Heroes of the Storm

Interesting blurb at the end of this interview:

Heroes of the Storm devs on the MOBAs future, new heroes, and Overwatch | GamesBeat | Games | by Mike Minotti

GamesBeat: I?m not asking for a confirmation here, but would it be silly for us to expect Overwatch characters in here at some point?

Gonzales: No, that?s a completely realistic expectation. What we?ve been saying, though, is that Overwatch definitely needs to have its own time to be recognized and celebrated. We want to let that happen.We?re planning on bringing Overwatch heroes into the fold, but we?re going to let Overwatch have its party, and then we?ll be like, hey, they?re over here too. We have a soft limit of, say, six months before we?ll do anything like that.But we absolutely will be visiting Overwatch and bringing Overwatch into the nexus. Our past games and future games are all viable candidates.

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Been messing around with Brightwing on PTR and I think he is still ok. With Revitalizing Mist, mist heals for around 300 (assuming 3 stacks) at level 20. Mistified talent will make it occur more frequently. The .5 reduction on polymorph duration is surprisingly noticeable. I think the biggest issue with BW now is that he has no real way to heal himself quickly anymore (bw doesn't gain anything from revitalizing mist talent, so will only get ~175 per mist at level 20).

Early impression I heard is BW's actual healing is buffed but utility is down

Blizzard should just remove flamethrower and ignite until they have a better solution. There is nothing fun about "Oh KT is 16. Guess we fucking lose" mechanic.

Flamethrower and ignite isn't instant win, you can counter pick him but yes, it needs to be toned down. Removing those would make him probably the worst assassin in the game

Still not sure Sylvs ultimate change is viable. Even with the nerf to wailing arrow silence + damage is too powerful a ultimate to not pick.

Dis_sl said:

Still not sure Sylvs ultimate change is viable. Even with the nerf to wailing arrow silence + damage is too powerful a ultimate to not pick.

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The devs acknowledged that in their little blue post or whatever in regards to the PTR going up.

TLDR was basically :"We know silence will still be picked most times because it's strong, but we wanted to make Possession not total shit and viable in niche split push cases".

Needless_sl said:

Flamethrower and ignite isn't instant win, you can counter pick him but yes, it needs to be toned down. Removing those would make him probably the worst assassin in the game

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The move Flamethrower to 16. If he wants to put out absurd AOE damage then do it from an arms length. Right now if you don't have a hard, hard, hard initiate KT just pokes you down to death.

Khaldor's gettin mad donation love today, that's nice to see lol

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Kael is fine, if they do anything they just need to something along the lines of:

Ignite- living bomb damage triggered from ignite is reduced by 50%.

Verdant Sphere used with Flamestrike- increases cooldown of flamestrike by 2 or 3 seconds if you match it with spheres.

Alternatively, get rid of lvl 7. Fissure Bomb and replace it with something else.

Kinda wishing I didn't get arthas now.....

edit: Really regret it now, half his skill set blows.

He will cycle back into power, tanks have been one giant carousel ever since I've been playing. Mura, Anub, and Jo will get tweaked (be bad) and the old "OP" tanks will rise again. Arthas is already seeing niche play with Tyrael now. For reference Arthas was God tier when I started, with Stitches (Only 2 tanks you saw, sometimes Tyrael for cast aside sweetness).

Arthas has a pretty good build that's almost all centered around taking the talents for his trait. He can actually put out some serious burst damage.

Dudebro_sl said:

Arthas has a pretty good build that's almost all centered around taking the talents for his trait. He can actually put out some serious burst damage.

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I'll have to try that out for fun.

My issue with him is just that he doesn't feel all that tanky and his E skill feels pretty useless

His E is mainly for clearing waves of minions or stopping someone from fleeing. Just don't use it all the time and it's fine. But ya he can wreck shit if you go the trait ability route.

I'm forever stuck around rank 19.. i keep getting paired up with clueless rank 40-50s what the fuck blizzard?

Derpa_sl said:

Kinda wishing I didn't get arthas now.....

edit: Really regret it now, half his skill set blows.

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You have to play Arthas like Kerrigan. Your power is immense at the early game and you HAVE to make ganks. Your goal is to secure an early game advantage by setting up heroes with your W and then refusing to let them leave with your E. If you're trying to solo tank as Arthas without setting up roaming ganks you're probably better off going Johanna in that comp.

How does the system differentiate between these two rank 45 people:

A) Veteran of MOBAs from Dota 1 onward, played 300 QM games, never rages and plays hard.
B) HoTS is his first MOBA and he played just enough QM games to get into HL.

Hint: it can't.

I do agree that the MM has some issues right now, but I'm not entirely convinced that it'd be a better game if we tweaked things to mitigate the odds that Needless gets the occasional super-feeder in his game. I'm not entirely sure that's possible; even with mathematical certainty that you're playing with your peers, you'll still get the routine fail-cascade of "player having a bad day, player makes stupid mistake, guy like Needless 'calls him out on it', player decides to go to Trolltown and purposely sabotages game."

Think about it: if we remove the mechanisms that allow an untested (R45) player to play with a higher rated R19, then we conversely 'trap' others who can do R50-R1 in 50 games. I did R50-R11 in 37 games. Someone like ZP is going to do R50-R1 in 40 games. If you removed the mechanism that allows ZP to play with substantially higher rated players, then he'd just be creating a whole bunch of bullshit 1-sided stomp games as he grinded out the ranks slowly with his "peers". Think of how many games ZP would wreck for one team if he had to play 150+ games to get to where his win rate approaches 50%.

I think the most valid criticisms of the matchmaker right now is that it:

A) needs to be 'smarter' with how much value it places on an individual's MMR in a team. In other words, just because ZP is a top 100 player doesn't mean he's going to carry a bunch of mid-tier players against a full team of good players. Which is how it sounds like it currently treats things...

B) related to A, but the system should allow you to wait longer for a better match. I'd rather wait 5-10 minutes for a great game than get a one-sided stomp in 10 seconds.

When are they getting out of this preseason shit?

Lol why does it matter